Polystrate Fossils

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[edit] Definition

A small cottonwood tree almost completely buried by desert sand. Note that no magic floods were involved in any way. Photograph © Larry Fellows, supplied by ESWIB.
A small cottonwood tree almost completely buried by desert sand. Note that no magic floods were involved in any way. Photograph © Larry Fellows, supplied by ESWIB.
Polystrate fossils is a term used by Creationists to refer to fossils which project through more than one layer of sedimentary rock.

[edit] Discussion

The essence of the creationist blunder about polystrate fossils seems to be that they think that geologists think that one layer of sediment takes a million years or so to be deposited, or that there are million-year gaps between the deposition of the layers, as in this example culled randomly from the Internet:

Like trees go thru your sediment layers evolutionists still hold these layers represent millions of years. [1]

For more information on what creationists think that geologists think about this subject, see our main article on the Creationist Bedding Blunder.

But of course, geologists think no such thing; they are well aware that the beds in sedimentary deposits are deposited much more frequently than that: often they are the result of annual deposition. Hence, any fossil which takes more than a year to be buried by such a process should be polystrate.

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