Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone National Park

by Frank Hall Knowlton

AGE OF THE FOSSIL FORESTS.

The question is often asked, How old are the fossil forests? It is, of course, impossible to fix their age exactly in years, though it is easy enough to place them in the geologic time scale. The stratified rocks that make up the crust of the earth, from the oldest we know to the most recent, have been divided by geologists into a number of major divisions or systems, each—except perhaps the oldest—containing the remains of certain kinds of plants and animals. The accompanying diagram ([fig. 16]), shows these major time divisions, arranged in their proper sequence from the lowest to the highest. The star (*) in this geologic time scale indicates the age of the rocks in which the fossil forests were entombed. It shows that they were buried during the Tertiary period. This period is divided into four epochs, the oldest called Eocene, having been succeeded in turn by the Oligocene, the Miocene, and the Pliocene, which just precedes the Pleistocene or glacial epoch. The forests of the Yellowstone National Park are found in the Miocene series of the Tertiary. As compared with the eons of geologic time that preceded it the Miocene is relatively very recent, though, if the various estimates of the age of the earth that have been made by geologists are anywhere near correct it may well have been a million years ago. It must be remembered, however, that this estimate involves more or less speculation based on a number of factors which may or may not have been correctly interpreted.

A study of the fossil trees themselves gives at least a rough approximation as to the length of time it may have taken to accumulate the beds in which they are now buried. As already mentioned, there is a succession of forests, one above another, through a thickness of 2,000 feet of strata. The unit of the measure of the time is the time taken by each forest to grow. Pine trees of the types represented in the fossil trunks require 200 or 300 years to reach maturity, and redwoods may require from 500 to 1,000 years. Twelve or more of these forest levels have been found. By multiplying this number by the minimum age of the trees (200 years) we shall have 2,400 years, and by multiplying it by the maximum age of the redwood (1,000 years) we shall have 12,000 years as the possible time during which these forests flourished. It is possible that the truth lies somewhere between these extremes.

Fig. 16.—Geologic divisions.
Era.	Period.	Epoch.
Cenozoic.	Quaternary.	Recent.
		Pleistocene (glacial).
	*Tertiary.	Pliocene.
		*Miocene.
		Oligocene.
		Eocene.
Mesozoic.	Cretaceous.
	Jurassic.
	Triassic.
Paleozoic.	Carboniferous.
	Devonian.
	Silurian.
	Ordovician.
Proterozoic.	Cambrian.
	Algonkian.
	Archean.