Specimen Creek fossil trees grew at the same time (Talk.Origins)

Claim CC332.1:


 * The fossil trees at Specimen Creek in the Yellowstone Petrified Forest show common tree ring signatures, indicating that they all lived at the same time. This rules out the conventional interpretation that the trees in successive layers all grew in place and were covered by successive volcanic eruptions.

Source:
 * Arct, Michael J., 1991 (Dec.). Dendrochronology in the Fossil Forests of the Specimen Creek Area Yellowstone National Park. Ph.D. dissertation, Loma Linda University.
 * Morris, John D., 1995. The Yellowstone petrified forests. Impact 268 (Oct.).

CreationWiki response:

Unfortunately the  main source (Arct's dissertation) is not readily available and as such it is not possible to check the validity of what Talk.Origins claim he said or to independently analyze his actual data, and there is no way other than a visit to Yellowstone National Park to check this out.

Do to the unavailability of Arct's dissertation, it is not possible to check this. Talk.Origins does not explain whether Arct himself says that the trees did not all die in the same year, or whether that is Talk.Origins' conclusion.

Even if it is true it is not a problem for a young-Earth model, as it only means that these fossil trees were buried in more than one event. It does not mean that they any of them were buried in place or that it did not happen in a relatively short time span.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt that these "paleosols" are fossil soil. This is a common uniformitarian interpretation, but there are reasons to suggest that it is not the correct one. Furthermore, there is plenty of other evidence that all of these trees were transported.