Researchers Probe Fossilized Rain Forest

Townhall ^ | 4/23/07

[Valin]

Standing on the wind-swept flatlands of southern Vermilion County, you might think you'd have to drive the 180 miles to Chicago's Field Museum to find the nearest fossilized tree trunk from the Pennsylvania Age, 300 million years ago. Nah, just drill straight down. That's where coal miners working south and west of Georgetown have unearthed, chunk by fossilized chunk, what has revealed itself over the past few years to be the remains of a fossilized rain forest. It covers about 15 square miles, all more than 200 feet below ground, and probably is the largest intact rain forest from that period ever studied, according to Scott Elrick of the Illinois State Geological Survey.

It's that scale that makes what lies just above the Riola and Vermilion Grove mines significant, he said. "We never encountered one whole forest preserved in one shot like this," Elrick said Monday. "The fossils just didn't stop." It's common to find small pockets of fossilized plants just above coal mines, he said. But in this case, experts believe, a fault that runs through the area unleashed a major earthquake that quickly sank the forest beneath a deep layer of mud, preserving it. "What they're looking at is very rapid preservation of this forest," meaning that plant tissue was preserved in great detail, rather than being broken down over time, said Ian Glasspaul, a collections manager at the Field Museum who is not involved with the work in Vermilion County. "It's a snapshot in time," he said. "That's what makes it exciting."

Elrick and researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Bristol in Great Britain started working in the mines a few years ago, driving deep underground in armored vehicles and then walking along miles of 7-foot-high passages. They spent most of their time looking up, according to Howard Falcon-Lang, the scientist from the University of Bristol.

That's because the coal that's being mined used to be the soil that the ferns, mosses and trees of the rain forest grew on, he said in a Monday e-mail sent to The Associated Press. Coal seams found across the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe once were the soil beneath the first rain forests, he said. People who live in eastern Illinois may occasionally long for a few more trees, but they'd find the land that now sits just above the miners' heads a tough place to call home during the Pennsylvania Age, Elrick said. Today's Illinoisan likely would recognize it right away as a jungle, he said. The plants were bigger _ 30-foot-tall horsetails and mosses as big as trees _ but familiar enough. The heat and humidity would be something else entirely. "It would be hot, extremely humid, really uncomfortable to be standing around there," Elrick said. "Something out of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Lost World.'"

Researchers haven't found much evidence of animal life, but they have found a eurypterid, a 6-foot-long lobster-like creature that would have crawled from beneath the waves of the long-gone Absoroka Sea, Falcon-Lang and Elrick said. Derrel Carter, a spokesman for Peabody Energy, said mining has stopped at the Riola mine but continues at the Vermilion Grove site.

Elrick and the other researchers plan to continue documenting what's above the Vermilion County mines, drawing and taking pictures and notes. But that's all they'll do, he said. The area deep underground isn't suitable for preservation. "Unfortunately, it will never be a visitable museum kind of piece," Elrick said. "We try to document to the best of our ability what we see, and take notes ... It's sort of like asking people to go to New York City and describe every store front in a day."

___

Associated Press Writer Jim Suhr contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

[ASA Vet]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1822411/posts

[NormsRevenge]

In this photo released Monday, April 23, 2007 by the Illinois State Geological Survey shows a fossil, part of a fossilized rain forest discovered in coal mines in Vermilion County in east central Illinois. Geologists say the area dates to the Pennsylvania Age, 300 million years ago. Researchers are probing the fossilized area which covers about 15 square miles, all more than 200 feet below ground, and is probably the largest intact rain forest from that period ever studied. (AP Photo/Illinois State Geological Survey)

[GOPJ]

Nice link. Thanks.

[ASA Vet]

Both threads were interesting reads.

[Valin]

It covers about 15 square miles

I’m going waaaay out on a limb and say that’s a big fossil

[Mad Dawg]

This is another obviously untrue story.
We know this because
IF there were once rain forests in Illinois, that means that Illinois was once much warmer, long, long ago. BUT there were no SUVs or Republicans long, long ago, and Bush was not President.
THEREFOR Illinois must have been cooler.
Q.E.D.

You gotta think these things through.

---

[aruanan]

Standing on the wind-swept flatlands of southern Vermilion County, you might think you'd have to drive the 180 miles to Chicago's Field Museum to find the nearest fossilized tree trunk from the Pennsylvania Age,

No, you just drive from Chicago south to Peoria to find lots and lots of fossilized tree trunks in the vicinity of Kickapoo Creek.

[Valin]

It appears (to me at least) that many of the global warming people think(?) that the planet should stay the same way it was when they were...(say) 8 years old.

(something I read here a couple of weeks ago)
“By the time you finish reading this the climate will have changed.”

[Mad Dawg]

“By the time you finish reading this the climate will have changed.”

LOL

Well? Should I get my mukluks or my sunscreen? Aaagggh! the uncertainty is killing me!

[Valin]

Should I get my mukluks or my sunscreen?

yes. :-)

[fishtank]

There also had to be a massive fast-acting catastrophic burial mechanism...........

[Mad Dawg]

HArrUMPH!

LOL!

[Petruchio]

This isn’t another article about Sheryl Crow’s butt, is it?

[SunkenCiv]

Ancient Rainforest Revealed in Coal Mine
Yahoo News | Mon Apr 23, 2007 | Jeanna Bryner
Posted on 04/23/2007 11:11:31 PM EDT by A. Pole
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1822411/posts

[SunkenCiv]

...thanks to tidal rhythms, the mud deposited on top of this forest is layered, so years can be counted as with the rings of a tree. The 15 feet of sediment that blankets the fossils was laid down in four months -- instantaneously in geologic time. ["Fossils of a 300-Million-Year-Old Forest Found", Discover Magazine, Michael Abrams]

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from April 23, 2007.

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[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Note: this topic is from April 23, 2007. Blast from the Past. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[SunkenCiv]

the "fossilizedforest" keyword:

• The Pompeii of trees: 300 million-year-old forest preserved by volcanic ash found beneath Chinese...
• 300 million year old fossilized forest discovered under coal mine in China
• Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming
• World's Biggest Snake Lived in 1st "Modern" Rain Forest
• Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming (at 3-5° hotter then )
• The World's Largest Fossil Wilderness (Coal mine)
• Largest prehistoric snake slithers into record books
• Largest snake was 'size of bus'
• Ancient fossil find: This snake could eat a cow!
• Archaeologists discover 8-million-year-old forest in Hungary
• Rare fossilized cypress trees found in Hungary
• Ancient Rainforest Revealed in Coal Mine