World's Largest Fossil Forest, and One of the Oldest

solitas writes in with news from last week of the discovery of a fossilized forest in Illinois. The forest was found in the ceiling of a working coal mine, 250 feet below the surface. It was drowned 300 million years ago in an earthquake, its discoverers speculate — here is a graphic of its formation. Geologists are excited because the huge fossilized forest, over 25 square miles in extent, preserves trees and other plants upright, as they grew.

Comments

Re:Upright

[ElectricRook]

did the ground below just sank/moved suddenly (25 square miles no less)?

Yes, the same thing happened a few weeks ago in the Solomon Islands. In an earth quake, a tectonic plate under one of the islands was thrust up ten or twelve feet.

Remember the tsunami a year and a half ago? There, an under water fault thrust up a tectonic plate just a few feet, but several miles long. That was the cause of the tsunami.

Go take a geology course at your local college (Junior College?). I did that last semester and loved it. I'm thinking about changing from Electronics to Geology. It's outside work, it pays pretty well, and there's actually a growing demand... And I'm getting really tired of computers kicking my ass on a daily basis.

Re:Speculating already!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yes, they're speculating

They're not asserting, they're not theorizing, they're not even hypothesizing. Because before you can get to that point, you have to ask questions. You have to say, "I wonder if ..."

For every scientist who actually makes an outrageous claim, there are a million idiots saying, "Those damn scientists, always claiming stuff they can't prove!" whether or not that bears any relation to what's really going on. Sure, unsupported claims in science are a problem. But a bigger problem is anti-scientists who deliberately fail to differentiate between theory, hypothesis, and that first-step sense of wonder which is at the root of discovery.

Re:There's no way it's 300 million years old

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a Christian"

Why do Christians say that like it's a badge of honour? It's not, it's an admission of belief in invisible super-beings, magic, superstition and other rubbish. It's no more rational than "As an Santa Clausian" or "As an Easter Bunnyite".

Re:There's no way it's 300 million years old

[Red Flayer]

You're missing the point.

It's quite possible to believe in Jesus Christ the man and Nicholas the man. It's also quite possible to believe in the existence of bunnies, and even more specifically, in the existence of one bunny that someone observed on Easter morning a couple centuries ago.

To believe that Jesus both literally turned water into wine and arose from the dead, and that Nicholas has 8 magic reindeer and scoots down chimneys to deliver gifts, is akin to believing that a bunny hops around and hides eggs on Easter morning. They are equitably irrational.

(which no one over the age of 8 actually believes in).

No one over the age of 8 believes in the Easter Bunny because adults evenutally let them in on the game when they express doubt. This is opposed to Christianity, when all evidence to the contrary, adults continue to enforce the myth of a supernatural being to whom we owe our salvation. There's also no political structure to support the existence of the EB, as there is with JC the Son of God/God/Holy Spirit (or whatever you believe). Annually, weekly, daily, 8-year-olds are encouraged to believe in JC the Redeemer, and punished for expressing doubt. You wonder why 8-year-olds discover the truth about the EB but don't discover the truth about JC? That's it right there.