Devonian Age Tree Fossils

While taking a ride in the Catskills today we stumbled upon the tiny town of Gilboa,

New York. Not much there except a fascinating little museum with fossils of tree trunks dating back 380 million years..when what is now New York State was below the Equator ! I posted this here because it is a postcard..but I am sure some people here are interested in fossils and perhaps we can get a stamp and cover thread going on it if one does not already exist !

Nice postcard pic Phil.

I had to look it up but this period was about 200 million years before the Jurasic period which we all know and love from the Jurrasic World movies, Velociraptors and T-Rex's and all them fun guys, which itself was still 150 million years before now.

That's a lot of birthdays.

Pic from Wikipedia of the glodbal land mass during the Devonian:



I don't think Nova Scotia had yet been scraped clean by glacierts passing through.

Puzzler, you are right....it was a time long before the dinosaurs and of course man..the museum is about the size of a small one room schoolhouse...but the people working there said that Gilboa is well known worldwide to people interested in the study of fossils !!

If man did not exist then, how can we have a picture of the land masses at that time? This is based on the assumption that the land masses have always moved in the directions that we observe to be happening now. The asteroid landing that supposedly killed off the dinosaurs (Another assumption as man was not there to observe.) might have made a slight change in comtinental drift. Did landmasses never bump each other and merge or change the direction of drift due to the collision? We cannot know if that happened, but it is possible. I used to teach science and I think that teaching scientific assumptions as facts is not wise. I am not criticizing the authors of the above posts. We have been brainwashed to accept scientific assumptions as fact by the school system. If Prof X or Dr Z says it, it must be true. I am a maverick because my mind asks How?, Why?, What?, etc about any info that comes my way. I know that I am a fallible human, but I want to think correctly as much as possible.

Ah, there is the nub of it.

And who is to say what is correct and what isn't?

Established scientists and established anybody don't like to change their positions, their views, because it would rock the boat and possibly lose them their jobs.

If everybody else belives the Earth is flat then you had better believe it too or else. You have to be a master negoriator and salesman to get the doors to even open a crack to sneak a new belief in amd not everybody has those skills.

Years ago, I remember finding trilobites in some grey rock. It was somewhere in the boonies outside Syracuse. My best fossil find ever!

I watched a TV programme about geological theory, which showed that Scotland was once attached to Nova Scotia and drifted across the Atlantic until it rammed into the rest of the UK. I thought that was interesting.

We must be related then, going way back.

2nd millennium cousins 1500 degrees removed. On my moms side.

So that explains why the Newfies sound the way they do !! I asked at the museum how they could put a date like 380 million years on a fossil of a tree trunk..i heard carbon testing..but still how close can they come with an estimate ??

When you're talking 380 million years, "close" is a relative term.

I don't know if there are any folks from the rock here so I feel I must, as an honarary Newfie (long stpry), put in a kind word for the nicest folks around from there.

Us mainlanders need to know a thing or two, let me tell you.


Scotland broke away from Nova Scotia (New Scotland)? Wow, didn't know that. Amazing. Quite a journey.

Maybe it should be renamed to "Not So Nova Scotia".

*duck*

I actually live in those mountains (that chain anyway)and find those sorts of things all the time actually. A lot of ancient tube worms and little triangular seashells. Hey Philb you want to travel just a little further you can make it to my house! It'll save me some postage anyway! lol

Ok, where are you?...i will come bearing stamps and covers !!

we gonna go fossil hunting? lol I live near Clearfield PA.

Pennsylvania..you mean I have to leave my comfort zone of New York State ?