Spectacular Fossil Forests Found In US Coalmine 197
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."
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.
Some better images (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anything else? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Anything else? (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:Note on Units (Score:3, Informative)
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:Note on Units (Score:1, Informative)
Which four temperature systems are symbolized by F again?
Breasts! (Score:2, Informative)
"Bristol City" is also cockney rhyming slang.