The Joggins Fossil Cliffs - Chapter 13, "Rock Solid Answers"

Polystrate plant fossils in the cliffs at Joggins, Nova Scotia, Canada, have long been seen as evidence of long, slow geological processes. These fossils are claimed to be evidence of in situ burial of ancient environments happening over and over again for long periods of time. However, there are numerous lines of evidence showing that the fossils were transported and catastrophically buried—a testament to the Flood rather than uniformitarianism. In this chapter we will examine evidence found in research by both uniformitarians and catastrophists, answer the uniformitarian and actualist skeptics, and discuss the strong indicators of the rapid deposition of the entire formation.

The Joggins fossil cliffs (Figure 1) are a fantastic, world-class, formation on the east coast of Canada in Nova Scotia. Joggins is located about 20 minutes from Amherst, on the Bay of Fundy, site of the highest tides in the world (rising and falling as much as 15 m [49 ft] twice daily). These tides constantly erode the 25 m (82 ft) high cliffs, continually creating new exposures.

Figure 1: The Fossil Cliffs of Joggins, Nova Scotia, Canada. Located on the shores of the Bay of Fundy,
these cliffs are eroded twice daily by the highest tides in the world.

The cliffs have a combined thickness of some 5,000 m (16,400 ft), three times the depth of exposed strata in the Grand Canyon. They are generally tilted to the south, typically around 20°. The cliffs include conglomerate, coal, shale, sandstone and limestone. There is a wide variety of small-scale geological features, such as fossil ripple marks, supposed raindrop imprints, channels, and slickensides.

Abundant body fossils found there include clams, lizards, occasional damselflies, and horseshoe crabs. Multiple layers of carbonized shale contain myriads of shells and fish scales. Trace fossils are also numerous, and mostly seen as tracks and trails from a variety of marine and terrestrial creatures. An interesting paleontological feature of Joggins is the presence of the lizard-like Hylonomous inside some hollow lycopod stumps.

The Joggins cliffs are now a fossil heritage site and no one may remove fossils or rocks from the cliffs without a heritage research permit.

The cliffs are best known for their abundant fossil plants, which are commonly coalified or petrified. Throughout large portions of the cliffs, many of these plants are “polystrate,” because they are buried vertically, cutting through many sedimentary layers (Coffin, 1975; Morris, 1999). The polystrate “trees” are not trees in the normal sense, but are giant, hollow reeds. Better known as lycopods and calamites, they are similar to modern club mosses and equisetum (horsetail), respectively.

The fossils are considerably larger than the modern forms. Modern horsetail seldom exceeds one meter in height and one centimeter in diameter. I have initially misidentified fossil horsetails as lycopods because of their size, about 10 cm (4 in) in diameter. Calamites probably reach 20 m (66 ft) in height in the fossil record. The longest calamite log I have seen at Joggins was less than 4 m (13 ft). Figure 2 shows a typical fossil calamite beside its modern counterpart.

Modern club moss reaches a maximum of 50 cm (1.6 ft) in height, but their fossil counterpart, the lycopods, had trunks that were many meters tall and reached diameters up to one meter! Figure 3 shows a polystrate lycopod from the Joggins Formation. It has a trunk diameter of roughly 75 cm (2.5 ft) and was at least 7.5 m (24.6 ft) tall.

In addition to the polystrate calamites and lycopods, there are actual fossil trees at Joggins called cordaitales, a type of pine. But these are almost never polystrate, but lie generally parallel to bedding.

The Joggins polystrate trees are considered a showcase for uniformitarian geology. Charles Lyell thought them a powerful evidence for uniformitarianism:

Hailed in 1842 by Charles Lyell (1881, p. 64-65) as “the most wonderful phenomenon perhaps that I have ever seen,” Joggins is mentioned in his Principles of Geology (Lyell, 1872) and Darwin’s (1859) On the Origin of Species.. This remarkable section, proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Falcon-Lang and Calder, 2004), profoundly influenced the young science of geology by serving as a proving ground for the principles of uniformitarianism, in situ botanical origin of coal, and incompleteness of the fossil record (Waldron and Rygel, 2005, p. 337).

The polystrate plants at Joggins are interpreted within the uniformitarian paradigm as trees that were buried in situ. In other words, they grew slowly in place for tens to hundreds of years before being buried and preserved. Thus they would be considered to exist in their growth position. Early researchers such as Dawson and Lyell observed that lycopods tended to be grouped together in specific sedimentary layers. At least 76 coal seams ranging in thickness from 0.05 to 1.5 m (0.16-5 ft) and 63 “forested” horizons with vertical lycopsid trees are known (Waldron and Rygel, 2005). Most of the “forested” horizons are associated with thin, organic-rich horizons or mineral zones. So, uniformitarians conclude that Joggins represents at least 63 forests that grew over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. That opinion was first expressed by Charles Lyell and William Dawson when they visited the site in 1851, and has been assumed by uniformitarians ever since.

For instance, on the TalkOrigins website, Andrew MacRae (1997) refers to Dawson’s (apparently an old-earth creationist) original work to support the uniformitarian position. He specifically uses Dawson’s drawings from the late 1800s to build a case for in situ emplacement of polystrates at Joggins (Figure 4).

Greg Neyman (2003), the author of the www.AnswersInCreation.org website, wrote a rebuttal to John Morris’ (1999) article on the Joggins cliffs. Neyman disputed much of what Morris wrote and attempted to defend the idea that the Joggins formation was produced by several floods over the eons of time.

Berg (2002) did a literature search and concluded that the polystrate fossils were transported and deposited in a vertical position with few attached roots, which would not be expected in an in situ origin. Birkeland (2004) tried to discredit Berg’s use of one of Dawson’s original drawings, claiming that Dawson simply did not draw the roots:

Mr. Berg is taking a 140-160 year-old schematic figure, drawn by a fallible human, far too seriously. Unlike God, geologists are fallible beings, who make mistakes and oversimplify their drawing to the point of leaving out important details. Part of the problem is that some of [sic] roots weren’t filled with sand or other sediment when the tree was buried. Thus, they are now preserved as carbonized compressions. These can be easily missed, if either the person looking for them doesn’t know what they are looking for or if the outcrop is dirty and too dangerous to clean off. What Mr. Berg ignores is that later geologists have demonstrated, as an absolute fact, that the polystrate trees of Joggins do have roots. This later research completely renders Dawson’s figures and text moot and meaningless as proof of anything, except that he over simplified [sic] his drawings to the point of leaving out important details and it is a serious mistake to regard his research as infallible.

Axel Heiberg Island, located in the northern Queen Elizabeth Islands, also has a section of polystrate trees with coal seams, similar to the Joggins site (Oard, 1995a; 1995b). Birkeland (2004) claims that creationists have missed the roots in the Axel Heiberg “fossil forests,” as well as at Joggins:

Conventional geologists would consider this a remarkably ill-informed statement because [sic] both popular and scientific publications, it is obvious anyone [sic], except the vision impaired, can find pictures of the large tree stumps that have been found at Axel Heiberg Island. For example, in both Basinger (1987) and Lemonick (1986), there is an undeniable picture of one of the scientists studying the Axel Heiberg Island forests [sic] standing on the very tree roots that Young Earth creationists claim don’t exist… The inability of Young Earth creationists to observe rooted trees that quite clearly exist at the Axel Heiberg Island and in the Joggins, Nova Scotia, sea cliffs is a remarkable example of how people are so blinded by their preconceptions that they are totally deaf, dumb, and blind to reality. It is one of many reasons why conventional geologists regards [sic] much of incredibly bad science that Young Earth creationists publish as alleged “research” with disdain and much humor.

I will address uniformitarian claims about the Joggins fossils. Although there are numerous advocates of that position, there is little need to deal with them individually, since most of what is written is simply a rehash of what is posted at the Talk.Origins website. Primarily, I will address the claim of “in situ” trees being preserved at Joggins.

It is convenient to divide the Joggins fossil cliffs into three parts, each of which is roughly 1,500 m (5,000 ft) thick. The Lower Cove section is the northernmost section, and runs south from Boss Point to Lower Cove. This is known as the Boss Point Formation and is stratigraphically the lowest portion of the cliffs. The second part is the “classic” Joggins section, which contains the most polystrate fossils and runs south from Lower Cove to MacCarron’s creek. The Ragged Reef section, the third part, runs from MacCarron’s creek to Ragged Reef and includes the Springhill Mines and the Ragged Reef formations.

Despite claims of long ages, the evidence at Joggins points to rapid burial and preservation of the polystrate fossils. These plants show no signs of rot, and were still soft and uncoalified when the formation underwent tectonic tilting. Consequently, the sediments must have also been soft and unlithified during this upheaval.

Because there are trees being deposited in the upright position in the bottom of Spirit Lake at Mount St. Helens, some creationists have mistakenly thought it a good modern analogue for Joggins. Although Spirit Lake does show that trees can be catastrophically deposited in an upright “growth” position (Morris and Austin, 2003), the Joggins polystrate plants were not deposited in that fashion. Although the Joggins hollow reeds are polystrate, the fossil pine trees are always parallel to bedding.

Previous investigations of the Joggins cliffs have been performed by creationists (Coffin, 1975; Berg, 2002). Coffin documented ten pieces of evidence of allochthonous emplacement of the fossil plants at Joggins, refuting autochthonous burial theories. Berg’s work was based strictly on literature research (mostly German), but is an excellent summary. He reached many of the same conclusions as Coffin, while pointing out nine pieces of evidence that suggest allochthonous emplacement of the Joggins deposits.

Since these men have already made an excellent case for the rapid deposition of the Joggins cliffs, I will not rehash their arguments. Rather, this article will compliment the growing evidence that the Joggins Fossil cliffs are a testament to the global Flood of Noah.

I have studied these cliffs for more than four years. I began after examining claims and counterclaims on the Internet about the significance of these exposures to the origins debate. I wanted to examine the evidence myself.

One of the strongest evidences that the trees did not grow in place is the lack of roots, which many evolutionists claim exist. Dawson (1855) claimed and MacRae (1997) repeated that the rootlets penetrating the clays had to have done so by growing through thick, dense clays. Dawson makes this claim in spite of the evidence he clearly saw, as seen in his drawing. Note (Figure 4) that the very prominent stump (level 4) is clearly missing its roots. Point ‘e’ in Figure 4 shows a stigmaria, the root of the stump that has been sheared off at the coal seam on which the stump rests.

Figure 5 shows a specimen of the stigmarian roots in question. They are immediately identifiable by the pockmarks on them. The pockmarks on the mold of the root on the right show places where rootlets once radiated outward. Dawson clearly drew a stigmarian root at the base of the stump (point “e”, Figure 4). His drawing shows numerous rootlets, even though they seldom exceed a centimeter in diameter. Yet none of them are attached to a main root! The only root drawn in the picture (attached to the stump) has clearly been stripped of its rootlets. Therefore, Dawson was careful to show the empirical detail contrary to his own hypothesis. Disarticulated rootlets are not an argument for in situ growth, but for catastrophic transport and deposition, although Dawson and MacRae attempt otherwise.

Birkeland (2004) thought that Dawson did see the roots attached to the stumps, but that is not supported by the meticulous drawing. While it is true that there are stumps with roots attached, and sometimes the roots are crushed, my experience has been that they can be clearly seen, as demonstrated by photos, drawings, and videotapes. Even when the roots are crushed (another evidence for rapid burial), they are easily seen, being at least several centimeters thick.

Although mud is constantly washing down and hardening on the cliff faces and often obscuring detail, Dawson’s eye for detail is indicated by the centimeter-scale rootlets that he did draw. The stump in his drawing appears to have been at or near beach level. At that level, he could easily have cleaned the cliff face as he drew. If detail was obscured, how could he see the small rootlets, yet miss the larger roots? He shows rootlets below the coal seam, but not above it. If the stigmaria were in the coal seam, but simply invisible, there should have been stigmarian rootlets radiating upward, too.

Figure 6 shows a stigmarian root with rootlets radiating in all directions. These rootlets are visible even though they are 6 m off the ground. If there were large roots that had fallen out of the cliffs to which these rootlets had been attached, leaving behind the rootlets, the molds of the large roots should be visible. Since Dawson supported the in situ hypothesis, he would have known that the presence of roots would have been evidence for his belief and certainly would have drawn them—if present.

Figure 6: Another stigmarian root, this time in-situ (in place). When rootlets are present and not stripped off,
they radiate out in all directions. The discoloration in the surrounding rock could be interpreted as soil that
was transported with the root when it was brought from its original location to where it sits now.

Coffin (1975) noted that the roots that are present show negative geotropism (Figure 7). This means that the roots were not oriented down into the dirt as expected from in situ growth, but instead are bent upward, extending above what would have been ground level.

Figure 7: A giant lycopod. The arrows mark out its stigmarian root. This root shows "negative geotropism."
The root is going up, not down. Roots normally grow down and out, so this implies that the roots
were floating in the mud, not buried "in situ" (where they grew).

Figure 8: The cavity left behind by an inverted lycopod stump. The arrows mark the stigmarian roots which are still in place.
Following the stil-visible cavities left behind by the roots, the roots on the right were on the same level and
apparently intertwined with the roots of the lycopod above.

This implies that the stumps were uprooted and transported to their present position. Also, Coffin (1983, p. 123), Mackay (personal communication), and Juby (2006) have all reported inverted polystrate stumps. Figure 8 shows a portion of Figure 7 with a cavity from an inverted stump highlighted. The longest roots I have encountered at Joggins extend to roughly 4 m (13 ft), and these are roots oriented in non-growth positions (Figures 7 and 8). Figure 9 shows a closer view. The stigmarian root on the right may have come from the lycopod stump above, however the one on the left could only have come from the inverted stump. Even the root oriented “correctly” does not help the uniformitarian argument; the roots of the two stumps are intertwined, with the upper one resting in an upright position on the lower, inverted stump. Furthermore, the roots from both stumps were on the same bedding plane as the roots of other stumps. Thus, intact roots (even on the same bedding plane as the roots from other stumps) are clearly not proof of burial in the growth position.

Figure 9: Close up of the inverted stump cavity in figure 8. The root at the far left of the picture is associated with the stump cavity;
because some of the rock had fallen out of the cliff, it could not be determined whether the root still in place on
the right was associated with the stump on top or the inverted stump.

Roots that are found at Joggins are typically truncated, either by bedding or the ends of the roots having been broken off. This is consistent with other polystrate stumps found around the world, such as Specimen Ridge at Yellowstone Park, the Axel Heiberg Island “fossil forests,” Alaska, and the lycopod trees of England (Oard and Giesecke, 2007), and is evidence consistent with allochthonous emplacement, as was noted in Spirit Lake.

Calamites are just as common as lycopods at Joggins. At any given time, dozens of calamites are visible in the cliffs. Of all the calamites I have seen over four years of fieldwork, I have yet to see one with attached roots. Dawson documented one with partial roots and another with what looks like fairly intact roots (Figure 10), while showing others in the same drawing as having none. In 2004, I observed some six or seven root balls exposed in the group of calamites located at the base of the entrance stairs to the beach. But not one of them had observable, intact roots.

Figure 10: Another drawing from Dawson, showing some calamites plants with reasonably intact roots (marked "a" in the drwaing).
Some of the calamites are obviously fragmented, no roots, yet still polystrate. Clearly, the roots are not an indicator for in situ growth and burial.
(From Dawon 1855; other editions 1868, 1878, 1891.) The Geology of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island,
or Acadian Geology, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh. Public domain.

These observations combine with common sense to lead to the conclusion that polystrate plants like those at Joggins are better interpreted within a catastrophic paradigm. While the 63 levels have been simply interpreted as growth horizons by uniformitarian scientists, other evidence suggests that the plants were transported and buried in their present positions in a very short time.

Without their “buried forest” model, uniformitarians would be faced with yet another example of rapid geologic processes that would invalidate both their timescale and their paleoenvironmental assumptions about the past. But clearly, rapid burial is required to preserve the vertically-oriented plant remains. The top of the “tree” would quickly decay if not buried within a short time frame.

When taken at the scale of the entire formation, this common sense conclusion puts a limit on the time available for the rocks to form. The conventional uniformitarian interpretation claims that the Joggins Formation took five to ten million years to accumulate. But the fossils refute this claim. Because the plants are vertical, sections of the formation must have formed quickly. Furthermore, because the vertical plants are found throughout much of the stratigraphic thickness of the formation, and the layers which are not cut across by polystrate fossils are identical to the layers that are, it is quite safe to conclude that the entire formation formed quickly. The only alternatives are that the plants stayed intact for thousands of years, without rotting or being petrified (or coalified), or that bursts of sedimentation occurred followed by hundreds of thousands of years of no geologic activity—or dead time. Both are difficult to imagine. To believe that plants would remain partially buried in a temperate environment without rotting requires much more faith than believing a catastrophist interpretation. For bursts of rapid sedimentation followed by long quite periods, there should be abundant sign of erosion at the interface between bursts but there are little signs of erosion.

As noted before, the Joggins polystrate fossils are giant, hollow reeds; fossil pine trees, though present, are usually not polystrate (Figure 11).

Figure 11: A petrified and coalified cordaitalles tree trunk. Notice that the outside bark has been coalified while the
inner core has alternating fossilization and coalification. Notice also it has been crushed flat - evidence of enormous
pressures on top of the log. How much pressure does it take to cruch a log to half its original thickness?

To date, I have found only one exception—a single Cordaitales stump found in 2005 beside the Forty-Brine Coalmine drain tunnel. It was only 37cm tall, was broken, and no roots were visible.

All the other cordaitales trees that I have examined are parallel to bedding. The combination of horizontal solid trees and vertical hollow reeds presents a profound problem for the uniformitarian hypothesis: how could weak, hollow reeds remain upright during burial while stronger, solid pine trees did not?

At the base of Coal Mine Point, a deep undercut has exposed two different layers of cordaitales tree trunks. Both have the trunks oriented in a north-south direction, lying superimposed, but separated vertically by about 75 cm (2.5 ft). Polystrate calamites connect these two layers and continue up into strata above the upper cordaitales! If the calamites were buried by a small flood (a common explanation) and remained upright during burial, how was the same flood able to transport solid tree trunks more than 75 cm (2.5 ft) in diameter?

While the reasons for plants being buried upright at Joggins is a mystery both to catastrophists and uniformitarians, a better explanation would be that all the plants were transported and buried together during rapid deposition.

One of the more interesting features of the Joggins polystrate fossils is the presence of fossilized bones of small lizards that are found inside some of the broken stumps. Uniformitarians have proposed that the plants were partially buried, died, and then broken, leaving a deep hole into which the lizards fell. But the bones are commonly disarticulated; which is assumed to be evidence of predation. However, there are no fossil remains of predators. Another possibility is that the skeletons were broken up by mechanical forces. The uniformitarian scenario is also suspect in the instance of one trunk that was found containing thirteen skeletons. Some stumps also contain plant debris and marine organisms (Mackay, personal communication, and personal observation).

Another problem for the uniformitarian hypothesis is that the stumps were subject to compression along their vertical axes (Figure 12), which resulted in their sides being split open in places. It is thus possible that both the bones and sediment could have entered via the fractures, rather than through an opening in the top. In a Flood scenario, the lizards might have been carried along with a mass of floating vegetation, or they might have been washed into the stumps between the time the stumps were deposited and the time they were covered by sediment.

Figure 12: A segment of lycopod trunk and calamites trunk. These were giant, hollow reeds. Notice they are both split up the side,
a pressure fracture. Outside pressures crushed the plants, fracturing them and forcing mud into them.
It is highly unlikely that it was a horizontal pressure - so how did this happen?

Lastly, the fossil lizards have been flattened by lithostatic pressure. This obviously happened before the animals turned to rock, and before the sediments surrounding them hardened into rock, but such flattening requires enormous amounts of overburden.

Both Birkeland (2004) and Neyman (2003) proposed small-scale, local floods as an alternate uniformitarian explanation (actually an "actualistic" explanation) for the polystrate reeds. However, their proposal must address the following observations:

1) With the exception of one small, polystrate stump, all of the tree trunks are parallel to bedding.

2) With the exception of one level, all of the lycopods are bent and/or leaning to the north, relative to the bedding planes. How would local floods have caused this orientation (opposite to the current direction) consistently for millions of years?

3) The Joggins cliffs are marked by parallel and continuous bedding throughout its 5,000 m (16,400 ft) thickness. Local fluvial flooding should have produced discontinuous bedding. Furthermore, to generate extensive parallel beds, thousands of metres of subsidence would have needed to occur over the entire area without tilting or tipping the land even a small amount.

4) Local flash floods would have eroded the well-preserved layers within the formation.

5) Arguing that some strata were quickly deposited (to cover the polystrate plants) and that identical sedimentary beds were deposited very slowly seems beyond the bounds of credibility.

6) Both the young-Earth creationist and uniformitarian literature agree that there are no mature paleosols (ancient soils) at Joggins (Coffin, 1975; Davies and Gibling, 2003). Soil horizons can develop in relatively short periods (Klevberg et al., 2003). If the formation is supposed to encompass some 5 to 10 million years in an environment conducive to soil formation, there should be mature paleosols in abundance. Their absence makes it even more difficult to claim in situ burial of the calamites and lycopods.

Thus, the uniformitarian explanation is faced with numerous large problems and internal inconsistencies too great to overcome. The simplest and best explanation for the Joggins Formation is rapid deposition occurring over a large area—exactly what would be predicted by a Flood scenario.

Figure 13 shows another stigmaria. Originally a hollow tube, it has been crushed and fractured under great pressure. The root has been changed into coal and the surrounding sediments lithified, creating a cast. The fossils are pristine, and the finest details are recorded in both the coalified root and the cast. They show no rot and are in pristine condition. We can safely draw several conclusions from these stigmaria: (1) the roots were crushed before they had a chance to rot, (2) the roots were crushed before they had turned to coal, and (3) the roots were crushed before any of the sediments had lithified.

Figure 13: A crushed stigmarian root. The roots at Joggins are flattened, and/or fractured from the surrounding pressures.
This obviously happened before the plants had coalified, or the sediments had hardened inside or out. See text for details.

As mentioned above, the plant fossils have been subjected to significant amounts of pressure prior to lithification. It would have taken significant overburden to crush the roots—essentially hollow wooden tubes. In preliminary tests, I have been unable to crush similar wooden tubes under pressures in excess of 575 kPa (80 psi). To generate a pressure higher than that would require overburden well in excess of 30 m (100 ft) in thickness.

Figure 14 is an interpretive diagram. More than 30 m of sediment must have been rapidly deposited to crush the roots prior to rotting or coalification, and prior to lithification of the surrounding sediments. The existence of crushed roots throughout the formation indicates ongoing rapid burial and thus the rapid deposition of the entire formation, just as predicted by the presence of polystrate fossils throughout the formation.

In addition to crushed roots, there are also crushed plants throughout the cliffs. I have documented numerous cordaitales trunks, especially in the lower two-thirds of the formation. These are also partially coalified and petrified, and were deformed prior to those diagenetic changes. The pressures required would have been much greater than those involved in crushing a hollow tube. Figure 11 shows that these logs are often distorted at a ratio of two to one. The overburden required to do this would be enormous, and would have to be present before the logs rotted, petrified, or coalified, and before the sediments hardened.

Some lycopods are also distorted. Some are sheared in half, with the two pieces offset (Figure 15). This must have occurred when the plant was still soft, since the fractured edges are bent. It would have broken cleanly had it been coalified. Also, if the sediments had already been lithified, there should have been no deformation of the plant at the point of shearing.

The overwhelming majority of polystrate plants are bent and/or tilted to the north—opposite the formation’s tilting to the south (Figures 16 through 18). Note that the plants were bent before they had a chance to rot or turn to coal, and before the sediments lithified.

Figures 16, 17 & 18: Polystrate lycopods exhibiting the very consistent bend or tilt to the north, relative to the
bedding plane (the layers of rock). It is most likely that this happened at the time of the tectonic upheaval which tilted the Joggins formation on its side.

For example, Figure 19 shows a pair of polystrate calamites found in 2002, near the middle of the Joggins formation. They were in pristine shape, with tremendous detail preserved in the casts and no visible rotting or cracking. The plants had obviously been bent while still soft. This was part of a group of calamites of which I verified that at least six of the ten were bent in this way (Figure 20).

Figure 19: Close-up of two calamites which are bent in unison. They are spiraling upward and clockwise.
At the layer marked by the bottom of the ruler (12-inch scale), the calamites bend away from the camera,
up and to the north, circling back toward the southeast while ascending roughly 8 inches. they then take on a
more vertical ascension, coming toward the camera in a southwest direction, ascending approximately
5 inches before the rock containing the fossil is missing.

Figure 20: Group of polystrate calamites, all bent in unison. The two calamites from figure 19 are the farthest two on the right.
I was able to confirm that at least six of the ten found were bent in the same spiral shape as the first two.
Calamites are marked with arrows, and the ones that were exposed enough to determine their bend were (from left to right) numbers 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Experiments show that a reed cannot be bent in a radius smaller than ten times its diameter without their failure by kinking. Both modern horsetail and cattail reeds of varying diameters demonstrate this feature, and an estimate of ten times is generous. Because the Joggins fossil reeds are split vertically, I sliced some of the modern ones in the same way, but it made no difference in the point at which the plants failed under stress and kinked. A bend radius of ten diameters is the minimum I was able to achieve without kinking of the plant.

Surprisingly, the fossil calamites of the Joggins Formation are not only bent well beyond that failure point without kinking, but are also twisted in ascending clockwise spirals. This suggests that they were both surrounded and infilled by sediments, and then were deformed in an unusual stress field. Since the only stress exhibited by the sedimentary layers is tilting, then that episode must also have been responsible for the deformation of the plants.

It is difficult to reconcile the obviously rapid sedimentation, obviously rapid deformation of the plants and surrounding sediments, and then the coalification and lithification of the formation with any uniformitarian scenario stretched over millions of years. All evidence indicates that the plants within the formation were soft, fresh, and buried in relatively unlithified sediments at the time of the tectonic shifting.

There are a number of scour surfaces throughout the formation that are claimed to be eroded river channels (Ferguson, 1988) [Figure 21]. But in a well-watered terrestrial environment, we would expect well-developed fluvial valleys and significant evidence of geomorphic erosion, especially over 10 million years. Instead, all that are seen are scour marks—as would be expected during rapid sedimentation of the Flood with a few brief hiatus and minor scouring by rapid currents. The lack or rarity of erosion in and between sedimentary layers of the Joggins (and many other formations) is powerful evidence for generally continuous rapid sedimentation.

Figure 21: A scour. This one was just north of Lower Cove and had fossil wave ripples exposed inside the channel,
marked by the arrow. The line shows the approximate contour of the scour and sedimentary layers.

In 2005, I found a scour north of Lower Cove which had several exposed layers of ripple marks oriented at right angles to a “channel” (Figure 22). The scours were likely formed by hydraulics as the current flow was across the “channel,” not down it. These ripple marks were present throughout the layers that transgressed the scour.

Figure 22: Close up of the fossil wave ripples showing a southerly current direction, not east or west.
This is definitive: the current was going across the channel, not down it.

Uniformitarians compare the Joggins fossil plants to those found at Axel Heiberg Island, which also exhibits polystrate plants. Like Joggins, they interpret those plants as representing multiple layers of forests buried over long ages. There were a lot of strong and completely inaccurate claims made by Birkeland (2004) about these plants. His comments were originally made on the on-line “EVC forum” (Birkeland, 2004) and contained so many flagrant errors it is difficult to know where to begin. Though quite dogmatic, his arguments were devoid of facts. His most compelling claims had to do with the supposed paleosols at Joggins—a claim that has recycled around the Internet.

Anyone who has read Christie and McMillan’s (1991) exhaustively documented research bulletin on the Axel Heiberg “forests” would know that stumps with reasonably intact roots are the exception, not the rule. They show (p. 32) six photos, five of which are of stumps. Of those stumps, only one have roots—extending to a whole 1.5 m from the stump! In fact, in their entire book, that stump is the only one shown with reasonably intact roots, and even they are broken off short. So the Birkeland (2004) claim is off the mark for two reasons: (1) most of the stumps observed do not have roots, and (2) the presence of roots is not conclusive evidence of in situ growth. Oard (1995a; 1995b) provided evidence that the Axel Heiberg fossil forests indicate deposition in the Flood.

Contrary to the claims of skeptics, polystrate fossils are an impressive argument against the uniformitarian theory of multiple forests. The Joggins Formation illustrates their shortcomings. Not only are polystrate fossils found throughout the formation (indicating rapid, ongoing sedimentation), but the plants are giant hollow reeds which were undoubtedly more fragile than the fossil prostrate trees found also in the formation. Clearly, the hoary hypothesis of Lyell and Dawson cannot explain the Joggins fossils.

The evidence argues against any long period of deposition, diagenesis, and later deformation. Missing roots or rootlets, inverted stumps, and the orientation of roots that are present all point towards a rapid transport and burial scenario. The distortion of fossil plants indicates rapid deposition of the entire formation followed by tectonic deformation before the plants had a chance to rot or alter to coal.

Joggins is a powerful argument for Flood geology, and many of its secrets remain to be harvested by field research.

Birkeland, B. 2004. “Soracilla defends the flood” on the Evolution vs. Creation forum (EVCforum) http://www.evcforum.net/cgi_bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=7&t=116&m=1. (Page is no longer available)

Coffin, H. 1975. Research on the classic Joggins petrified trees. In Howe, G. F. (editor), Speak to the Earth: Creation Studies in Geoscience, pp. 60-85. Creation Research Society Books, Chino Valley, AZ.

Coffin, H. 1983. Origin by Design. Review and Harold Publishing, Hagerstown, MD.

Christie, R.L. and N.J. McMillan (editors). 1991. Tertiary Fossil Forests of the Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiberg Island, Arctic Archipelago. Geological Survey of Canada Bulletin 403, Ottawa.

Davies, S.J. and M.R. Gibling. 2003. Architecture of coastland alluvial deposits in an extensional basin: the carboniferous Joggins Formation of eastern Canada. Sedimentology 50(3):415-439.

Falcon-Lang, H.J. and J.H. Calder. 2004. UNESCO World Heritage and the Joggins cliffs of Nova Scotia. Geology Today 20(4):139-143.

Juby, I. 2006. The fossil cliffs of Joggins, Nova Scotia, photographic essay. CRSQ 43(1):48-53.

Klevberg, P., M. Oard, and R. Bandy. 2003. Are paleosols really ancient soils? CRSQ 40(3):134-149.

Morris, J.D. 1999. The polystrate trees and coal seams of Joggins fossil cliffs. Acts and Facts Impact #316, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, pp. i-iv.

Morris, J.D. and S.A. Austin. 2003. Footprints in the Ash: The Explosive Story of Mount St. Helens.. Master Books, Green Forest, AR.

Oard, M.J. 1995a. Mid and high latitude flora deposited in the Genesis Flood - part I: uniformitarian paradox. CRSQ 32(2):107-115.

Oard, M.J. 1995b. Mid and high latitude flora deposited in the Genesis Flood - part II: creationist hypotheses. CRSQ 32(3):138-141.

Oard, M.J. and H. Giesecke. 2007. Polystrate fossils require rapid deposition. CRSQ 43(4):232-240.

Waldron, J.W.F. and M.C. Rygel. 2005. Role of evaporite withdrawal in the preservation of a unique coal-bearing succession: Pennsylvanian Joggins Formation, Nova Scotia. Geology 33:337-440.

Chapter 13: The Joggins Polystrate Fossils

Ian Juby