What is Permineralzation?

It is when mineral rich waters enter the void spaces in an organism: plant or animal life. The waters leave mineral deposits behind, which create a cast of the organism or completely permineralize it, meaning it was petrified - turned to stone. For permineralization to occur, the organism has to be rapidly covered in a deep layer of silt shortly after death, or perhaps when it was still alive. This process is extremely rare, as conditions have to be "just right".

A fossilized tree trunk, still rooted in the ground, in Florisant, Colorado. These fossilzed trees are large and do not share the vibrant colours of those in Arizona's Petrified Forest. Here they are shoring up the fossil with bands of iron to keep it from falling apart, from splitting, like shale or slate, as it is pure "stone".

Some perspective on the size of this one - Florisant, Colorado.

New life, a tree, growing out of fossilized tree remains.

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Arizona's Petrified Forest

Two large sections (knee high) of a fossilised tree in the Petrified Forest in Arizona

(click onto all photos to see much larger, clearer images)

Arizona

A fine example of permineralized forest-remains can be found in north-eastern Arizona at the Petrified Forest National Park. The park is quite large and is actually made up of the Painted Desert as well as the Petrified Forest. Flat walking trails make it easy to enjoy. When I was there I was awed at what I saw. Colourful tree trunks lying on their sides in the desert, some whole but many broken into segments, as if they’d been turned to stone whilst standing and then broke into sections when they fell to the ground. These trees were permineralized, petrified – “turned to stone” by the mineral rich waters that at one time covered them.

My first view of the petrified trees, located at the edge of the Painted Desert.

We are told that the trees were toppled over by volcanic eruptions and were swept away by water, to very quickly become deposited in mud and covered with volcanic ash. Later, the area was covered by an ocean and the trees were covered with more silt. Some scientists ("old earth" believers - in opposition to the "young earth" believers in the scientific world) say 60 million years ago the ocean disappeared and flowing rivers appeared. These rivers gradually eroded through 2,600 feet of sediment depth to finally expose the petrified logs we see today. Below the desert’s surface are supposedly more layers of petrified trees. After being buried for millions of years, the logs, from the process of mineralization, were turned into colourful stone. To date, paleaontologists (paleontologists) have found 150 different species of fossilized plant life in Arizona’s Petrified Forest, as well as a variety of fossilized reptiles.

 

Here you can see the red-brown bits of tree trunk scattered in this part of the Painted Desert.

These mineral-rich fossils are made of jasper, quartz and other semi-precious minerals

A beautiful large specimen

This fossilised tree trunk has to be supported by a bridge of cement.

some perspective as to their size

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Forever Shales

 $ BUY NOW AT AMAZON - click here

A short excerpt from Forever Shales

I was so distracted by the upcoming holiday that I let my guard down, and I narrowly avoided another incident with the cook. You see, she didn’t have to sharpen her kitchen knives herself. She could have had one of those knife-sharpening contraptions, but she always insisted, “They don’t work as well as an experienced ‘and an’ a whetstone.” Being a servant to a wealthy family, a man stopped by once a week, and with his whetstone he would sharpen all her knives to a soldiers envied perfection. Usually, the kettle went on the hob, and as he sharpened he would relay to Cook and Armstrong the latest gossip, picked up second-hand and third-hand from the kitchens of Hackney’s mansions and houses. He would drink two cups of tea and demolish several biscuits before he would be finished. It was a thirsty job, was gossiping. They called him Mr Finchey.
      “Mr Finchey,” she would say, as she let him in by the tradesman’s entrance, “we’ll ‘ave a nice cup’a tea, an’ thou canst fill us in on wots new.”            
     Mr Finchey was quite tall, and a bit dirty-looking, if you know what I mean. A bit like old Toothless George, though Finchey’s clothes were in better shape. He had an annoying habit of smacking his lips after every sip of tea, and he always dipped his biscuits into his tea first, before taking a bite. I think it was because he didn’t have any teeth at all, but just a large, gaping hole surrounded by loose, wet, flabby lips.
     On this particular knife-sharpening day she had requested that a certain few knives be extra sharp, as she had a “job to do”. When Finchey was all done he said, “E’re you are, Eliza, moy luv. These ‘ere noives are sharp enuff to butcha’ your very o’n cow. ‘Ere, you ain’t finn’ink of doin’ som’ink dodgy, are ya?”
     I didn’t pay much attention to what was being said. I didn’t really understand much of it, and I didn’t take the time to think about what had been said, nor to make sense of it. Besides, it was difficult deciphering Finchey’s words. He was a right cockney! Sometimes I had to think really long and hard to understand just one sentence when people were speaking, let alone a whole slew of sentences, and him speaking cockney made it even more difficult. 
     Finchey left, not wasting an extra minute as he had other houses to visit, and shortly later, when it all was quiet downstairs, I tiptoed below to get a drink.  Thinking Cook had gone into the pantry, I thought that if I nipped down to the kitchen I’d be back up the stairs before she could see me, but instead of silence I heard her footsteps coming quickly across the stone floor. Before I could escape, she was there – large knife in hand.  She waved her favourite knife in the air, the one she used, two-handed, whenever she chopped up large vegetables or joints of meat on the table. After the incident when she had stabbed me in the side of the ribcage, I became more aware of the fact that I could easily go missing for an entire day, and then appear as the main course, served from our best Minton, in the form, of, say, a giblet pie with gravy and vegetables, or a beef curry with rice. Did I have an overactive imagination, or was this an actual possibility? I could just imagine her gloating. A secretive, gleeful expression on her face as Armstrong served up the pie or curry, and someone in the family asking, in an enquiring voice, “What of Shales?  Any news of him? We hear he’s gone over the hedge again. Wonder when he’ll be back?” All the while, Eliza, the cook, would be below in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea, and out of my bones planning soup for the next day. There wouldn’t be anything at all left of me – not one jot of my existence. Nobody would know what had happened to me, or that they had eaten me! My innocent bones to be carted off by the dustman.
     She slowly crept towards me as water dripped from my lips and plopped back into the bowl. Ploppety plop . . . plop.
     “I’ll cook you, I will. I’ll cut you up in li’l pieces o’ meat, and nobody ‘ll know.   I’ll serve you up fow dinner!” 
     Her face told me she meant it and she wasn’t larking about. She came towards me, blocking off my escape route to the stairs. I was terrified and I felt my hackles bristle, and I went into my defensive stance: feet squared evenly on the floor and head slightly lowered, with a slow, deep growl coming from between my bared teeth.  I now knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had to get away from her. I turned quickly and ran to the back of the kitchen, where the door to the trade . . .



 More excerpts, for your reading enjoyment, can be found in past issues of The Sheepdog.


I am currently working on my second novel, which is nearly finished (another year or so!). Illustrations will have to be done, which take time. At about 600 pages or more, this one is a "large" work. For those who love King Arthur, they will truly enjoy reading about him from his pet dog's point of view. Contains no sex and no swearing, just excellent writing. Notes and ideas for my third book are already being taken down.

Forever Shales, written by me, Deborah Berkeley, is a 475 page historical novel. Told from the perspective of a dog, Shales the Boarder Collie will delight you as he “tells all” about his Victorian family. This book is uniquely illustrated in the “old style”, giving the reader the sense that it was written decades ago and not recently, and there is no sex, and there is only one instance of swearing. It can easily be purchased online through Amazon books, or go to the publisher's online store at www.melrosebooks.com

Sheepdog's Facts That Defy The Theory Of Evolution

Most of us were taught in school that the coelacanth was our very earliest ancestor.

Coelacanth

In 1938 a coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae was caught at the mouth of the Chalumna River on the east coast of South Africa, which put evolutionary believers’ brains into a tailspin. No such fish was supposed to exist except in fossil form, and yet one was caught, photographed and examined. Since this find, more Coelacanths have been caught. The second was caught in 1952 off Anjouan Island in the Comores Islands, northwest of Madagascar.

A preserved coelacanth in an Australian museum.

Evolutionists thought these fish were our ancestors. (and so did our school teachers!) They were previously only known from the fossil record, going as far back as 400 million years. Before 1938 they were believed to have become extinct, being last seen in the fossil record about 80 million years ago. We’ve been told that because they had “footy protuberances” that millennia ago they “crawled” out of the ocean and then over more millennia “evolved” into land mammals, which includes us humans (your ancestor is a coelacanth!).

     In 1987 a German naturalist named Hans Fricke observed coelacanths in their habitat off Grand Comoro Island. He photographed the fish as they swam, but they did not crawl, walk, or otherwise move on the ocean’s bottom by using their lobed fins. They swam like fish, which they weren’t supposed to be able to do. Therefore the coelacanth didn’t move up from sea to land, filling the evolutionary gap, as hypothesized.
     Such fish are called “living fossils”, a term actually coined by Charles Darwin to categorize anomalies that don’t “fit” into the evolutionary time chart. To date, other living fossils, such as the redwood tree Metosequoia, have been found other than the coelacanth. Living fossils are evidence that go against the theory of evolution.  

Sources http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~etmcmull/COELAC.htm


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Axel Heiberg Island's Mysterious Remains

located in northern Canada near to Greenland

 Axel Heiberg Island

I’d never heard of Axel Heiberg Island before, not until I accidentally came across it when I was looking for something else on the internet (dinosaur DNA). When I saw the words “fossilized wood can still be burnt or sawn in two”, I was immediately curious enough to find out more about this strange find. You see, if the wood is still ‘wood’, then it isn’t fossilized, well not in my mind.
     The island itself is located in the Canadian Arctic, close to Greenland, and it is Canada’s seventh largest island. According to Statistics Canada, it has an area of 16,671 square miles. In world ranking it comes in at number 31 in size. Today it is a cold and barren place that bears no resemblance to the temperate forested land it once was.

 So what about this “fossilized wood” being found on Axel Heiberg Island? Those scientists who believe in the “old earth” theory and not the “young earth” theory, believe that 40 million years ago, the Arctic was covered by a lush forest of large conifer trees and other fauna, and although it had only six months of daylight each year, the average temperature was mild enough for the forest to thrive, along with a variety of dinosaurs. Then came the flood, or many floods, as some scientists claim, which covered the forest. During this time the silt in the waters covered the trees and other plant life, protecting them from the mineral rich waters which would have normally permineralized them (replaced with silica) and turned them to stone. Then, when the weather in the Arctic changed, the new climate of cold, dry air dried out and desiccated the remains of the trees and plants, causing them to become “mummified”.
     The wood, and other fauna remains, that are reported as being 40 million years old, can be cut in two and burnt on a fire. In fact, scientists say that the wood is so well preserved because it suffered no chemical changes during the time of “preservation”, and also, that its original woodgrain, as well as its bark, has been fully preserved, meaning it has lasted all these millions of years without rotting, eroding, or turning to dust.
     One of the redwood conifer species Metosequoia, found as mummified on this island, was supposed to be extinct. However, in 1944/45 it was discovered to be thriving in central China. Today, one can find living examples of this tree, this “living fossil”, in the Toronto Botanical Gardens as well as in other places.
     There is something nagging me about these ‘facts’. It’s easy for me to accept the flood, the famous one when God told Noah to build his ark. But one internet site mentions there were as many as ten floods that covered this prehistoric forest. By the time the layers of silt built up deep enough to cover the large, fallen tree trunks, wouldn’t the trees have simply rotted away? I mean 40 million years is a very long period of time! In order for this “silt-covered” theory to work, wouldn’t it have had to have happened all at one go? I’m not a scientist. I don’t know the answers, but I know that if I took a fire log from my woodpile and laid it in my back swamp, that in 20 years it wouldn’t exist. In about five years it would be black, soggy, and very heavy, and most definitely rotten. Scientists say that conditions have to be just right. I’ll accept that, but to find leaves and pine cones still as they were after 40 million years doesn’t quite ring true with me, for surely they would have got washed away in said floods, and carried off to some distant land? And surely if these leaves were “desiccated” they would have turned to dust after all these millennia and blown away on the wind. It’s a mystery to me, but the remains do exist. As to how old they are is something that everyone will probably never agree upon.

Images of dried leaves and pine cones from Axel Heiberg Island, reported to be millions of years in age.

My sources were Wikipedia: just search for Alex Heiberg Island; or go to this site: click here hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton.ca/forest/eocene14.html

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Sheepdog's Favourite Quote - Richard Dawkins

“Evolution has been observed, it just hasn’t been observed while it’s happening.” - Richard Dawkins

Scientists Against Evolution

Do all scientists believe in evolution? No, many believe in creation. And, not all scientists believe it takes millennia to create fossils but that the process can happen over a much shorter period of time. The following I copied from WISE GEEK regarding the fossil record.   

“People also debate the reasons for sometimes radical leaps in evolution, and some scientists question certain conclusions which have been reached with evidence from the fossil record, suggesting that more information is needed. The fossil record has also been a bone of contention in the debate over evolution and the age of the Earth.”