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Spectacular Fossil Forests Found In US Coalmine
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Sep 10, 2008 05:32 PM
from the sixteen-tons dept.
from the sixteen-tons dept.
Smivs passes along a report up on the BBC about the fossil forests found in coal mines in Illinois. "The [US-UK] group reported one discovery last year, but has since identified a further five examples. The ancient vegetation — now turned to rock — is visible in the ceilings of mines covering thousands of hectares. These were among the first forests to evolve on the planet, [according to] Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang... 'These are the largest fossil forests found anywhere in the world at any point in geological time. It is quite extraordinary to find a fossil landscape preserved over such a vast area; and we are talking about an area the size of [the British city of] Bristol.' The forests grew just a few million years apart some 300 million years ago; and are now stacked one on top of another."
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Note on Units (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Note on Units (Score:5, Funny)
47 libraries of congress to a Bristol measured at 47 degrees Reaumur 83 furlongs above knee level,
Man, I've know that for about a microcentury.
Parent
no, no (Score:4, Funny)
The GP post asked about "libraries of congre," clearly a misspelling of "libraries of conger" as in [[daggertooth pike conger]], a species of fish. So we're really talking upwards of 7,000 libraries of conger rather than 47 libraries of congress.
Parent
Re:Note on Units (Score:5, Funny)
And how many firkins of beer could you keep at 45 deg. F for a fortnight assuming an ambient 70 deg temp assuming that each dram (weight, not fluid) of coal has 1373 btus of energy. Please state all simplifying assumptions. Keep 3 sig. figs.
Parent
Re:Note on Units (Score:5, Funny)
Answer: 0.000
Simplifying Assumption: I drank it all.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
This must be obscure measurements day.
Re:Note on Units (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone with worldly knowledge knows that Bristol was the standard unit of measurement for area within the British Empire for over 200 years. It seems I'll have to break it down for you ignorant Americans:
Bristol has an area of 1,184,832,000 square feet (source [wikipedia.org])
The Library of Congress has an area of 2,100,000 square feet (source [nps.gov])
Therefore 1 Bristol (and TFA's fossilised forest) == 564.2 Libraries of Congress
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Note on Units (Score:5, Funny)
It depends on how pregnant that Bristol is.
OK, bad bad taste. My coat's the one full of shot.
Parent
Re:Note on Units (Score:4, Funny)
My coat's the one full of shot.
Unfortunately, Bristol's baby's daddy's latex coat was not full of shot. That's why she is now pregnant.
Parent
My apartment is approximately 675 nano-Britols (Score:2)
My apartment is approximately 675 nano-Britols.
Football Fields (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
"And here I thought I was paying attention to SI conventions."
"Hectare" is not an SI unit.
There is no "thousands of hectares," there is only "tens of millions of square meters," or "thousands of square hectometers," if you prefer.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope this guy's address isn't anywhere near Switzerland...
What I find more interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What I find more interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The top of Mount Everest is partially limestone [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's because it was all covered with water at one point.
Ten Thousand Square Meters (Score:3, Funny)
A hectare is fine, too.
why looking at the ceiling? (Score:4, Interesting)
What I don't understand from the article (yes I RTFA) is why this fossil forrest needs to be viewed from below? Was all the commercially interesting coal beneath the tree fossils, or is there a scientific reason to approach it bottom up?
Re:why looking at the ceiling? (Score:5, Informative)
The coal was produced primarily by rotting leaves and soil, which yes, would have been under the trees.
So you have a layer of petrified leaves and trees and a layer of coal beneath it. They take out the coal and you get a really big long cave, where you can look up at the bottom of the fossil bed.
Cool stuff. Now I'm waiting patiently for someone to mention the global warming comment.
Parent
Re:why looking at the ceiling? (Score:5, Funny)
global warming comment
Parent
Re:why looking at the ceiling? (Score:5, Interesting)
well, finding that in a very short period of time, of natural global warming, that rainforests are replaced with giant ferns is a little disheartening. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html [geocraft.com]
this is a wonderful find, oh and BTW the area where the coal was mined was actually a peat bog, that turned into a forest in the carboniferous period, then turned into sea several times and then back into a forest, and was also a ferny weedy place. most likely earthquakes from changes in plate tectonics played a huge role in how the land mass changed, from being above land, below land, and the erosion of nearby mountains provided the silt to cover the land when it was above ground.
so no the coal was not the result of the forest, although it may have added slightly to the coal, when it was submersed, most coal is formed from wetlands where vastly more biomass concentrates and is preserved from decaying due to water covering it thus preventing microbes from getting the oxygen to decay the plant matter. if you want coal you look for places where the water was stagnant like prehistoric wetlands, or former continental shelf areas.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cool stuff. Now I'm waiting patiently for someone to mention the global warming comment.
Um, you just did.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As the oceans begin to transgress (the 50-cent geologist term for sea level rise), the existing forest is quickly buried and you end up with a snapshot of the forest remaining. After removing all the coal, you end up with a cave where you look up to the interesting part. Well, interesting for me, since I'm a paleontologist.
Interestingly, this work is only done because the coal mining company is really, re
Nice Catch (Score:2)
"It is quite extraordinary to find a fossil landscape preserved over such a vast area; and we are talking about an area the size of [the British city of] Bristol."
Without the edit, I may have thought it was a reference to someone else [imageshack.us]...
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
but do fossilized witches float?
Re:Great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
This one since 1884 (Score:5, Informative)
This one is a few miles from my house.
n 1884, coal miners working the Black Diamond mine in New Straitsville, southeastern Ohio, went on strike when the Columbus and Hocking Coal and Iron Company cut their pay from 60 cents a ton to 40 cents. Legend has it that other miners, unhappy with the work stoppage, loaded several coal cars with oil-soaked firewood and rolled them into the mine.
It's hard to imagine what benefit they anticipated, but I bet they never dreamt of what resulted.
For the next 122 years and counting, the underground fire, called the Devil's Oven, has burned in the coals seams around the Monday Creek area. At times the fires have been prominent and close to the surface. In fact, in the 1930's tourists came to the area to watch their guides cook meals over smoking holes in the ground.
During the depression, a WPA crew was dispatched to the area to fight the fire, with indifferent success.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources estimates that to date the Devil's Oven has consumed 276 million tons of coal, or 20 square miles of the black gold. Today the fire is burning about 40 feet underground... from blog of Tom Barlow
Parent
Some better images (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Some better images (Score:4, Interesting)
"The funny thing about atheists is that most of them will never understand the irony of their faith."
Atheism is merely the absence of theism.
Anything else a person may attribute to their non-theism or use to explain it is their problem/baggage, but it isn't atheism. Atheism is a "faith" like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Parent
Re:Some better images (Score:5, Insightful)
Gaah, I'm really quite sick of this mantra. For one thing.. it's a mantra. That does not make sense.
For another, if you put as much effort into not collecting stamps as most of the atheists on slashdot put into not believing in god, people would be suggesting support groups for your aphilatelism problem.
Parent
Re:Some better images (Score:4, Insightful)
"Gaah, I'm really quite sick of this mantra."
Then be sick of it, but it is still accurate. One may be theism-free quite easily. One may also defend their right to not be imposed upon by the agendas of the superstitious, and as superstitions are vigorous they sometimes require vigorous opposition.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Some better images (Score:5, Funny)
Fine, how about a new mantra? If atheism and religion were sex ....
Atheism would be like masturbation - you know you're there by yourself, but hell, you're having a good time!
Religion would be like masturbating with a happy face drawn on your hand - it's still only you, but you like pretending that you're not alone.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Gaah, I'm really quite sick of this mantra. For one thing.. it's a mantra. That does not make sense.
Actually it does. Faith is believe in something for which there is insufficient evidence, not believing in something for which there is insufficient evidence does not require faith.
For another, if you put as much effort into not collecting stamps as most of the atheists on slashdot put into not believing in god, people would be suggesting support groups for your aphilatelism problem.
I tried to believe in God when I was younger, I really did, but the evidence was so overwhelming that I finally accepted that there was no god.
Not believing in God is very easy for me. Theism, when I tried it, was extremely difficult for all the contradictions I had to ignore.
However, one place I do expend some effort is going ou
Atheism requires faith (Score:4, Insightful)
The absence of theism is not an absence of faith. For that you want agnosticism. Atheists require faith to believe that there is no God, and nothing else outside their perceived world. In reality, this viewpoint requires more faith than any religion, because all religions offer "proof" that they are true. Not so for atheism.
Parent
Re:Atheism requires faith (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense - you simply need analytical ability and a basic grasp of logic.
Using your "logic", you would likewise require proof in order to believe that there is no Santa Claus. In fact, NOT believing in Santa Claus would actually require more faith than believing in Him, since the TV shows Him to us all the time, and we even see Him at the mall during the Christmas season.
Also wrong. Agnosticism is the way you approach a problem, not an answer to a problem. If you're agnostic about a question, that means that you accept that it can never be 100% proven or disproved. It doesn't answer the question of whether you think there is a god, though. It just means that your willing to consider both possibilities, and weigh them in a fair manner.
Technically speaking, I'm agnostic about the existence of Santa Claus. I can never prove for certain that he DOESN'T exist. But that doesn't mean that the chances of him existing or not existing are 50/50. I can use logic, observation, and deductive reasoning to come to the most likely conclusion, and I can even assign it a rough probability.
In the end, everything does come down to belief, since no question can be answered with 100% certainty. But there is a WORLD of difference between belief based on scientific observations and critical thinking, and a belief based on blind faith.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Person A: "I believe that 499,999 of the 500,000 religions out there are false. I reject their evidence. I accept one of the 500,000 religions, mainly because {I accept their eviden
I've seen this before (Score:3, Interesting)
My dad and grandfather used to work in the coal mines in the southwest Virginia and eastern Kentucky area. They used to find bits of fossilized plants all the time.
Though I doubt they found anything as largescale as what is presented in the article, my grandfather did bring out of a mine a fossil tree trunk/root system that he placed in his front yard. I very distinctly remember playing on it as a child, it was quite large.
Stacked forests? (Score:2)
I see a solution for global warming...
Why in a UK News Site (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this not a big enough story for US news companies to cover?
I'm one of the geologists involved in the discover (Score:5, Informative)
Greetings folks,
I'm Scott Elrick from the Illinois State Geological Survey, one of the researchers involved in the original discovery. Here's a little background:
* This current story is an extension of a story from a year ago. When the story broke, I popped onto Slashdot to answer questions - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=232903&cid=18936603 [slashdot.org] (ignore the misspellings in those posts!)
* As a result of the publicity, I used some of the guts of my postings above to put together this webpage: http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/research/coal/fossil-forest/fossil-forest.shtml [uiuc.edu] I tried to make a 'general public' kind of site that covers most of the basics and posted all of the pictures we took.
* From the guts of the webpage, I put together a magazine article for 'Outdoor Illinois' on the discovery. Here's a PDF (direct link) of the article - http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/research/coal/fossil-forest/Outdoor-IL-art.pdf [uiuc.edu]
* By the end of the year we made it into the top 100 stories of 2007 in Discover magazine - http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jan/fossils-of-a-300-million-year-old-forest-found [discovermagazine.com]
* There should be an article coming out in Smithsonian magazine about the discovery in a few months time.
Now to the current news.
Our colleague Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang of the University of Bristol, UK is heading up a multi year research effort to examine the Desmoinesian - Missourian boundary in the Middle Penn. Howard, Bill DiMichele of the Smithsonian Institute, John Nelson and myself of the ISGS, Isabel Montañez of UC Davis and Neil Tabor of SMU will all be collaborating to work out the paleobotanical, sedimentologic, CO2, and climate history of this large scale climate transition. Really this is more an announcement of further research than of results!
As flat as Illinois is, we do have a pretty good record of this transitional period Rocks in Illinois? Who knew!
Cheers!
p.s. I covered a fair amount of ground in my previous postings last year in terms of answering questions. I'll pop back later this evening and see if any more pop up though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a long time (like millions of years?) between the forests getting buried. So it could even have been a volcano erupting repeatedly every million years. Or a river where "mother of all floods" would happen with periodic climate shifts (like Milankovitch cycles), causing thousands of years worth of mud deposits to be suddenly released. Huge glacial lakes bursting are one source of huge sudden floods, and they can be triggered both by climate change and by volcanoes.