Fossil Forests of Axel Heiberg Island

In the below post, Mr. Palmstršm claimed that fossil forests found on Axel Heiberg Island the Canadian Arctic are evidence of Earth Crustal or Pole Shift. He argues that the 45 million year old fossil forests found on Axel Heiberg Island could never have existed in the arctic cold that characterizes the modern Arctic Circle. Also, in other posts, he claims that any plant cannot survive in the Arctic Circle where it can be completely dark for months. Thus, he concludes that this fossil forest had to have been shifted by Earth crustal displacement from low latitudes into the Arctic Circle. However, he overlooks the fact that 45 million years ago, the Earth was much warmer than is now. In fact, at the time these forests existed, the Earth was in one of its warmest phases of the last 100 million years. Since then, the cooling of the Earth has forced both trees and animals to move permanently southward.

There are many plants that have adapted to 24-hour darkness of Arctic winters. A classic example is the arctic willow, illustrated by Francis (1991:62). The arctic willow is currently found on Axel Heiberg Island. The absence of forests is likely the result of temperature. Today, trees are restricted to regions where the average July temperature is at least 50ˇF and the temperature is above freezing for more than a third of the year. In addition, the presence of permafrost presents an extreme handicap on trees (Francis 1991).

Reference Cited:

Francis, Jane E., 1991, Arctic Eden. Natural History.
pp. 57-62. (January 1991).

References About the Axel Heiberg Fossil Forests:

Basinger, J. F., 1989, Early Tertiary floristics and
paleoclimate in the very high latitudes. American Journal
of Botany. vol. 76, no. 6, Supplement, p. 158.

Basinger, J. F., 1991, The fossil forests of the Buchanan Lake
Formation (early Tertiary), Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian
Arctic Archipelago; preliminary floristics and paleoclimate.
In: R. L. Christie and N. J. McMillan, eds., pp. 39-65,
Tertiary fossil forests of the Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiberg
Island, Arctic Archipelago. Geological Survey of Canada
Bulletin no. 403 Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Francis, Jane E., 1991, Arctic Eden. Natural History.
pp. 57-62. (January 1991).

Greenwood, David R., and Basinger, James F., 1994, The
paleoecology of high-latitude Eocene swamp forests from
Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian High Arctic. Review of
Palaeobotany and Palynology. vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 83-97.

Greenwood, David R., and Basinger, James F., 1992,
Stratigraphy and floristics of Eocene swamp forests from
Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Canadian
Journal of Earth Sciences. vol. 30, no. 9, pp. 1914-1923.

Lepage, B. A., and Basinger, J. F., 1991, Early Tertiary
Larix from the Buchanan Lake Formation, Canadian Arctic
Archipelago, and a consideration of the phytogeography of
the genus. In: R. L. Christie and N. J. McMillan, eds.,
pp. 67-82, Tertiary fossil forests of the Geodetic Hills,
Axel Heiberg Island, Arctic Archipelago. Geological Survey
of Canada Bulletin no. 403 Geological Survey of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 1991.

McIver, E. E., and Basinger, J. F., 1989, The morphology
and relationships of Thuja polaris sp. nov. (Cupressaceae)
from the early Tertiary, Ellesmere Island, Arctic Canada.
Canadian Journal of Botany. vol. 67, no. 6, pp. 1903-1915.

Below are some articles that discuss the Axel Heiberg Fossil Forests.

Re: Aliens created man!
Author:	PVH
Date:	1999/10/09
Forum:	alt.prophecies.nostradamus
Posted on:	1999/10/09
Message-ID:
NNTP-Posting-Date:	Sat, 09 Oct 1999 20:54:28 CDT

On 1999/09/28 and in <37f08cf3.5570105@news.utfors.se>,

C M. Palmstršm wrote:

+On Mon, 27 Sep 1999 23:28:31 +0100,

+dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk (Doug Weller) wrote:

++In article <380adc14.43439387@news.utfors.se+,

++on Mon, 27 Sep 1999 21:15:13 GMT,

++christer@palmstrom.nuNOSPAM said…

(… material omitted ????)

++++There are some articles linked to my web site (url

++++in sig) showing that this is not just impossible, but

++++that the temperature in Antarctica for the past few

++++million years was hardly conducive to civilization!

+++ LMAO, And you have, missed… nothing…. as usual!

+++ Please, Is this guy for real!??

+++

++Oh I’m real. I’ve got my doubts about you. Or at least

++in your interest in reality.

+Swamp Cypress and Dawn Redwood can only grow in a warm, +wet climate, and there my friend you have reality! + +alaska.edu/ScienceForum +dep.anl.gov/arctic +umaine.edu/canam/Nunavut/Nunfacts +anl.gov/OPA/news97

As a reading of the URLs shows that the age of these deposits is an important aspect of the *reality* of these fossil trees. 1. For example, in The Farthest North Fossils Article #788, Larry Gedney states:

The trees had once grown 150 feet tall and lived for as long as 1,000 years (they were so well preserved that the growth rings could be counted). One astonishing thing about the stumps is that they are 45 million years old!

2. Also Argonne in the Arctic states:

The expedition will collect fossilized plants from the
  remains of a forest which grew at this site 45 million
  years ago.

3. Finally in Students can e-mail Argonne scientist on arctic expedition, it is stated:

The expedition will collect fossilized plants from the
  remains of a forest which grew at the site 45 million
  years ago.

This webpage describes modern day Canada, including its climate and geography some 50 million years *after* the fossil forest was buried.  The reality of the situation is that what this web page has to say about climate is totally irrelevant to the conditions when the forest grew and was buried.

[NOTE: If Mr. Christer wants me to plant Swamp Cypress and Dawn Redwood, he is going to provide me with a time machine that travel back in time 45 million years and put me exactly on Axel Heiberg Island. 🙂 ]

The presence of broadleaved deciduous forests and swamps in Axel Heiberg Island in the High Canadian Arctic is not that surprising as the climate was warm and wet about 45 million years ago.  The fossil plants and vertebrates found clearly show that the climate was warm and humid.

About these fossil trees, Greenwood and Basinger (1994) state:

A record of high-latitude (79 degrees 55’N) Eocene polar vegetation is preserved on Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian High Arctic, in megafloras in an alternating sequence of swamp-coal, fluvio-lacustrine shale and channel-sand lithofacies of the upper coal member of the Buchanan Lake Formation. Some exposures of the swamp facies contain significant fossil forests represented by autochthonous assemblages of mummified in-situ tree stumps and forest-floor leaf-litter mats. Exposed trunks within a single coal layer represent multiple stands of trees killed and buried at the different times over 500-2000 yr.

The warm climate fossils include Metasequoia tree stumps, soft-shelled turtles, and even flying lemurs.

Both Marincovich et al. (1990) and Thiede et al. (1990) summarize data that show that the Arctic Ocean was “remarkably warm and equable” during the Cretaceous and early Tertiary. The terrestrial climates were likely mild temperate or warmer lacking any prolonged spells of freezing weather as indicated by vertebrate faunas, fossil pollen, and fossil leaves.

During the Tertiary, the climate gradually cooled until an ice cover formed about 20 million years *after* Antarctica was first glaciated. This is shown that by the Pliocene, only fossils of fairly cool-climate trees, e.g., spruce, are found in strata outcroping in the region. In younger strata, no full-size trees are found in the fossil floras dominated by tundra plants. It is clear from the fossil evidence that a substantial degree of climatic cooling, which started during Early Eocene occurred between the burial of the swamp cypress and dawn redwoods and the Pleistocene (Leg 151 Shipboard Scientific Party 1995, Marincovich 1990; Thiede et al. 1990, Wolfe 1985, 1986). Paleovegetation maps of the northern hemisphere illustrated by Wolfe (1985, 1986) clearly show that the north pole was situated directly over the Arctic Ocean during all of this time and refute claims of any Pole Shift or Earth Crustal Displacement.

During this time, the Antarctic Peninsula was covered with a “Seasonally humid Nothofagus rain forest (10-15 degrees C).” Unlike the Arctic Circle, regional temperatures within the Antarctic Circle were dropping to subfreezing temperatures around 30 million years ago (Dingle and Lavelle 1998:fig 3).

A fascinating aspect of the tree fossils is that assuming that the axial tilt of the Earth hasn’t changed, Axel Heiberg Island would have experienced 24 hours of sunlight in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter. There would have been variable periods of day-night cycles between the winter and summer. This would explain the abundance of broadleaved deciduous conifers, e.g., the bald cypress and Metasequoia and broadleaf angiosperms which lose their leaves for the winter. Such trees would have best able to adapt as there would not be much need for leaves during the months of total darkness. In fact, Wolfe (1985, 1986) shows that broadleaved deciduous trees, which could adapt to the conditions characterizing the Arctic Circle. As temperature became cooler, the polar broadleaved deciduous forests were replaced by polar mixed conifer forests within the Arctic Circle (Wolfe 1985, 1986).

References Cited:

Dingle, R. V., and Lavelle, M., 1998, Late Cretaceous – Cenozoic climatic variations of the northern Antarctic Peninsula: new geochemical evidence and review. Palaeogeograpy, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. vol. 141, nos. 3-4, pp. 215-232.

Greenwood, David R., and James F. Basinger, 1994, The paleoecology of high-latitude Eocene swamp forests from Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian High Arctic. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology. vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 83-97.

Leg 151 Shipboard Scientific Party (1995) Farthest North: Ocean drilling in the Arctic gateway region. GSA Today. vol. 5, no 2, pp. 1,31-33. (This reference can be downloaded here.)

Marincovich, L., Jr., Brouwers, E. M., Hopkins, D. M., and McKenna, M. C., 1990, Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic paleogeographic and paleoclimatic history of the Arctic Ocean Basin, based upon shallow-water marine faunas and terrestrial vertebrates. In A. Grantz, L. Johnson, and J. F. Sweeny, eds., pp. 403-426, The Arctic Ocean Region. The Geology of North America, vol. L, Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado.

Thiede, J., Clark, D. L., and Herman, Y., 1990, Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic paleoceanography of the northern polar oceans. In A. Grantz, L. Johnson, and J. F. Sweeny, eds., pp. 427- 458, The Arctic Ocean Region. The Geology of North America, vol. L, Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado.

Wolfe, Jackson A., 1985, Distribution of major vegetation types during the Tertiary. In E. T. Sundquist and W. S. Broecker, eds., pp. 357-375, The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric CO2: Natural Variations Archean to Present. American Geophysical Union, Geophysical Monograph no. 32.

Wolfe, Jackson A., 1986, Tertiary plant megafossils and paleoclimates of the Northern Hemisphere. In T. W. Broadhead, ed., pp. 182-196., Land Plants. Univeristy of Tennessee Department of Geological Sciences Studies in Geology no. 15, Knoxville, TN.

Related URLS:

Fingerprints of the Gods Exhibits 4 to 6, Fossil Forests

Champsosaurs and Fossil Forests of Axel Heiberg Island

Article on the champsosaur: Bones of crocodile-like creature confirm that Arctic was once a hot spot

Arctic Expedition 96

[… stuff about the beech forests of Antarctica …] … signature omitted …

———— Second Post About Axel Heiberg Island ————

The stumps on Axel Heiberg Island certainly haven’t been sitting on the surface for the last 45 million years and nobody claims that they have been. As discussed by both Greenwood and Basinger (1994) and Francis (1991), the stumps were buried in water-saturated clayey fine-grained deltaic sediments. If these sediments don’t dry out, wood can be preserved for very long periods of time contrary to what is claimed above. Only recently, has erosion removed the protective sediments from the stumps and exposed them on the surface. The dry and extremely cold climate prevented the wood from being destroyed by bacteria and fungi as and after they are exposed by erosion (Francis 1991, Greenwood and Basinger 1994).

In fact, there are many places within the Atchafalaya Basin and flood plains of the modern Mississippi River where buried forests only a couple hundred to thousands of years old lie beneath swamp and flood plain. Borrow pits and excavations for the construction of levees and Interstate Highway 10 exposed a number of these buried forests at different times.

Other published examples of wood being preserved for long periods of time by being buried in water-logged sediments are too many to list. They include:

1. The wreck of the 18th century Spanish ship, El Nuevo Constante. Parts of the hull, logwood, blocks of annatto dye, and cowhides preserved beneath Atchafalaya Bay muds (Pearson and Hoffman 1995). Also see:

https://www.crt.state.la.us/dataprojects/archaeology/virtualbooks/NUEVO/artifact.htm

2. logs, wooden artifacts, and basketry from archaeological sites all over the world (Coles 1992). One of these sites is the Gesher Benet YA’aqov where waterlogged wood was found together with 500,000 year old Homo erectus remains.

3. a 400 to 500 year old dugout canoe found in the clayey sediments filling an abandon meander loop of the Mississippi River in Washington County, Mississippi (Fuller 1992).

4. the Union gunboat U.S.S. Eastport and steamboat S.S. Edward F. Dix which are both completely preserved being buried beneath 40 feet of water-saturated Red River alluvium (Albertson 1995, 1996). (In fact, there is at least another riverboat buried beneath the Red River flood plain in Louisiana that has been found to be preserved this way.)

5. Thousands of logs have been found in alluvial deposits of various European rivers which have been dated by dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating as being as old as 10,000 to 11,000 BP. (Becker et al. 1991).

6. 11,700 year old logs that are part of the Two Creek Forest Bed exposed between two glacial till near Two Rivers, Wisconsin (Broecker and Farrand 1963).

7. 20,000 year old tree trunks rooted in the Farmdale Geosol (a fossil forest soil), encased in lake deposits and buried by 40 ft (12 m) of glacial till (Tiskilwa formation) overlian by 5 ft (1.5 m) of Peoria Loess. This is exposed in Charleston Stone Company quarry near Charleston, Illinois (Hansel et al. 1999).

8. At Mt. Pleasant Bluff on the Mississippi River about 25 miles (16 km) north of Baton Rouge, LA, Brown (1938) described a buried forest bed consisting the stumps of cypress (Taxodium distichum) and rare tupelo gum (Nyssa sylvatica). The forest bed occurs 25 ft. (7.6 m) above the present level of the Mississippi River buried within Pleistocene-age backswamp deposits of the Mississippi River (Prairie Formation) capped by about six ft (1.8 m) of Peoria Loess (Mossa and Autin 1989).

There are innumerable other examples of wood and stumps being preserved in water-saturated sediments. Once buried in waterlogged alluvial, deltaic, and marine sediments, wood can be preserved as long as the sediment remains wet and the wood is not compressed by being buried beneath thousands of feet of additional sediments.

References Cited:

Albertson, Paul E., 1995, Confirmation of the USS Eastpoint and Edward F. Dix. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 27, no. 6, pp. 417.

Albertson, P. E.,1996. The Search for the USS Eastport. Video #96041. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterway Experiment Station Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Becker, Bernd, Kromer Bernd, Bernd, and Timborn, Peter, 1991, A stable-isotope tree-ring timescale of the Late Glacial/Holocene boundary Nature vol. 353, pp. 647-649.

Broecker, W. S., and Farrand, W. R., 1963, Radiocarbon age of the Two Creeks Forest bed, Wisconsin. Geological Society of America Bulletin. vol. 74, pp. 795-802.

Brown, C. A., 1938, The Flora of the Pleistocene Deposits in the Western Florida Parishes, West Baton Rouge Parish, and East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Pp. 59-96 in Contributions to the Pleistocene History of the Florida Parishes. Louisiana Geological Survey Geological Bulletin no. 12, Louisiana Geological Survey, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Coles, Bryon, 1992, The Wetland Revolution in Prehistory. WARP Occasional Paper no. 6, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom.

Francis, Jane E., 1991, Arctic Eden. Natural History. pp. 57-62. (January 1991).

Fuller, R. S., 1992, Archaeological Recovery and Analysis of an Indian Dugout Canoe (Site 22 WS 776) Discovered in the Bank of Steele Bayou, Swan Lake, Washington County, Mississippi. Report submitted by Coastal Environments, Inc., Baton Rouge, Louisiana to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg District, Vicksburg, Mississippi under Contract no. DAWC38-89-D-0038, Delivery Order no. 7. 56 pp.

Greenwood, David R., and Basinger, James F., 1994, The paleoecology of high-latitude Eocene swamp forests from Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian High Arctic. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology. vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 83-97.

Hansel, A. K., Berg, R. C., and Phillips, A. C,. 1999, Glacial Sediments, Landforms, Paleosols, and 20,000-Year- Old Forest Bed in East-Central Illinois. Illinois State Geological Survey Gudiebook 26, Illinois State Geological Survey, Urbana, Illinois.

Mossa, J., and Autin, W. J., 1989, Quaternary Geomorphology and Stratigraphy of the Florida Parishes, Southeastern Louisiana. Louisiana Geological Survey Guidebook Series no. 5, Louisiana Geological Survey, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 98 pp.

Pearson, C. E. and P. E. Hoffman, 1995, The Last Voyage of the El Nuevo Constante. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA.

++ Axel Heiberg Island Forests Continued +++

In the thread “Re: Aliens created man!” Mr. Palmstršm posted article, no. <37ff9f4a.13835960@news.utfors.se> to alt.prophecies.nostradamus in which he complained about Doug Weller stating that the preservation of the Axel Heiberg Island forests took millions of years. The first with his complaint was that Mr. Weller was referring not to these fossil trees, but rather a hypothesized instance of true polar wandering that Kirschvink et al. (1997) proposed happened during the Early Cambrian.

Concerning the fossil forests of Axel Heiberg Island, Mr. Palmstršm stated:

Took many millions of years… sure, and the Swamp Cypress and Dawn Redwood in the Canadian Arctic you keep ignoring… guess you and your biased friend have no problem with scavengers, fungi, bacteria and such… Did you and your friend know that when plants die they are immediately attacked by these, which destroy them before they can be as in this case mummified “many millions of years later”?

Yes, I and Weller know all that very well. However, Mr. Palmstršm seemly doesn’t know that the stumps haven’t been sitting on the surface for the last 45 million year and nobody claims that they did for so long. As discussed by Greenwood and Basinger (1994) and Francis (1991), the stumps were buried in water-saturated clayey fine-grained deltaic sediments. If these sediments never dry out, wood can be preserved for very long periods of times contrary to what is incorrectly claimed above. Only recently, have the stumps been exposed by erosion. The extremely cold and dry climate inhibits the wood from being destroyed by bacteria and fungi while being and after they are exposed by erosion. Documented examples of wood and basketry being preserved for hundreds and thousands of years in water-saturated sediments, which refute the objections of Mr. Palmstršm, are noted above.

Have you and your friend Heinrich ever been in a forest!?

Yes. In fact, I have gone out canoeing and with birdwatchers many times into the Atchfalaya Basin and hardwood bottomlands of the Mississippi River. I have become well acquainted with the cypress and hardwood swamps within these areas.

In fact, there are many places within the Atchafalaya Basin and flood plains of the modern Mississippi River where buried forests only a couple hundred years to thousands of years old lie beneath swamp and flood plain. A number of excavations done for Interstate Highway 10 across the Atchafalya Basin revealed several buried swamp forests, similar to those being exposed by erosion on Axel Heiberg Island. They were found buried beneath 3 to 4 meters of mud. In one case, historic maps show that the buried forest was only a hundred or so years old.

In addition, a fellow geologist showed me a borrow pit that was dug to obtain clayey fill for a nearby Mississippi levee. It exposed buried forest similar to those found on Axel Heiberg Island. In the borrow pit near Donaldsonville, LA, three levels of cypress stumps were found stacked on top of each other. The cypress stumps in each level are in a marvelous state of preservation despite being thousands of years old. Each level of stumps represents a cypress forest that grew in the backswamp of the Mississippi River during an extended period of very low or nonexistent sedimentation. The trees were killed and their stumps buried and preserved when the development of a crevasse splay or change in the river course flooded the backswamp with sediment over a very short period of time. This is the type of situation that could have created the buried stumps of the fossil forests of Axel Heiberg Island.

At Mt. Pleasant Bluff on the Mississippi River about 25 miles (16 km) north of Baton Rouge, LA, Brown (1938) described a very similar buried forest bed consisting of the stumps of cypress (Taxodium distichum) and rare tupelo gum (Nyssa sylvatica). The forest bed occurs 25 ft. (7.6 m) above the present level of the Mississippi River buried within Pleistocene-age backswamp deposits of the Mississippi River (Prairie Formation) capped by about six ft (1.8 m) of Peoria Loess (Mossa and Autin 1989).

References Cited:

Brown, C. A., 1938, The Flora of the Pleistocene Deposits in the Western Florida Parishes, West Baton Rouge Parish, and East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Pp. 59-96 in Contributions to the Pleistocene History of the Florida Parishes. Louisiana Geological Survey Geological Bulletin no. 12, Louisiana Geological Survey, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Coles, Bryon, 1992, The Wetland Revolution in Prehistory. WARP Occasional Paper no. 6, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom.

Francis, Jane E., 1991, Arctic Eden. Natural History. pp. 57-62. (January 1991).

Greenwood, David R., and Basinger, James F., 1994, The paleoecology of high-latitude Eocene swamp forests from Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian High Arctic. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology. vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 83-97.

Kirschvink, Joseph L., Ripperdan, Robert L., and Evans, David A., 1997, Evidence for a Large-Scale Reorganization of Early Cambrian Continental Masses by Inertial Interchange True Polar Wander. Science, vol.277, no. 5325 pp.541-545.

Mossa, J., and Autin, W. J., 1989, Quaternary Geomorphology and Stratigraphy of the Florida Parishes, Southeastern Louisiana. Louisiana Geological Survey Guidebook Series no. 5, Louisiana Geological Survey, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 98 pp.

+/Christer
https://web.archive.org/web/20040513112106/http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF7/788.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20010210025715/http://www.dep.anl.gov/arctic.htm
https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/263419_nunavut_considers_a_new_park_for_axel_heibergs_fossil_forest/
https://web.archive.org/web/20010421041734/http://www.anl.gov/OPA/news97/news970627.html

As a reading of the URLs shows that the age of these deposits is an important aspect of the *reality* of these fossil trees.

Early Observation About Geologists 🙂

And some rin up hill and down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to pieces with hammers, like sae many road makers run daft. They say it is to see how the world was made. — (Sir Walter Scott, St. Ronan’s Well, 1824.)

[ Key words: pole shift, Earth Crustal Displacement, crustal shift, Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian High Arctic ]

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Dec 14, 2001

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