claim: Flat-topped landforms, such as buttes and mesas, are the remains of giant ancient trees. Tree features can be seen in Devils Tower, for example – the large hexagonal columns are fibers of a tree that would have been 19,000 feet tall. Other tree features can be seen in buttes and mesas, such as sloped sides and flat tops that look like tree stumps after trees are cut down.
evidence: Available scientific evidence shows that plateaus, mesas, buttes, and pinnacles form through geological processes of deposition and erosion. As a more erosion-resistant top layer of rock slows downward erosion, the sides of these landforms preferentially weather and erode away, leaving flat-topped landforms with sloped sides. There is no evidence that these landforms are the remains of ‘ancient trees’.