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

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

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 6000, tops.

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

[VoidCrow]

They have 6000 thousand finger? I knew inbreeding was a problem, but seriously.

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

[bursch-X]

A) There is historic evidence that a wandering priest called Jesus Christ did actually exist. So for the human person of Jesus Christ we can be pretty sure that he wandered the earth. We can't really say anything about his wondrous deeds, however.

B) The figure of Santa Claus has two origins one is Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra. But he was basically just used to "christianise" a much older pagan belief ( http://tinyurl.com/29sdow ). Anyway the Person of Saint Nicholas is a historic figure.

C) The easter bunny is apparently just a human invention

Why do you say it is just as irrational to believe in the easter bunny as it is to believe in Jesus or Saint Nicholas?

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

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> C) The easter bunny is apparently just a human invention

Die, you infidel!

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

[joystickgenie]

Because when they say it they do it knowing that people (like yourself) will attack them for it and ridicule them, but they still say it because they want you to know they are proud of having their faith and are willing to display it even in the face of constant ridicule. Sure sounds like a badge of honor to me.

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

[Nutria]

Sure sounds like a badge of honor to me.

Which is pride, and therefore a sin.

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.

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

[Galvatron]

Indeed. So far as I understand Christianity, this is the fundamental message. We are all sinners and nothing but. Salvation is gained through faith alone.

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

[fyngyrz]

Huh? There's four books in the Christian Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, written by four guys about Christ. Now of course, these books were written by guys born after Jesus had died, and they were retelling oral stories that were told to them by others. But that's still historic evidence, though not terribly reliable

The bible is not known to be contemporaneous with the time that Jesus is described to have lived in. The earliest codexes come from 250 AD if you take the scholarly consensus, and from about 150 AD if you buy the idea that while everyone else was using scrolls, the P52 fragment (aka "St John's fragment) just "happened" to be put into codex form. We don't have a single copy earlier than that, and so cannot establish that the books of the bible come from any earlier. The bottom line is that the bible we have cannot trace its own roots back to Christ's time, or to the time immediately afterwards - everything we have is much younger than that.

The problem with works of this nature - that arise after an event, or apparently do - is that history and historical fiction are both even easier to write later than they are when the events are occurring. So to validate the bible as a history, rather than a historical fiction, we need to trace it back further than we have been able to thus far. It cannot serve as evidence of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John any more than Tom Clancy's novels serve as evidence of John Ryan. We need evidence that shows that Jesus - not to mention the four putative authors - actually existed outside the context of the cult of the mid 0000's, and outside the context of that cult's book of the 0100's...0300's. But there isn't any, and that's the problem with saying "there is historical evidence about Jesus."

There's another problem, too. That is that the bible - the NT - reports countrywide events that go unreported by a whole slew of writers working in that period. Such as:

Matt. 27:45; Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour...

Add to that reporting of supernatural events, and we have every reason to distrust the bible as a historical document. If there is no contemporaneous evidence for Christ (and there isn't) and the bible is telling untruths (and it is) then it is clear that to bring any rational validity to this we need more than we have so far. Perhaps someone will dig it up tomorrow, but until they do... it's just one religion among many, and a book.

The existence of the cult of Christianity in Tacitus's time is more evidence, because obviously they all got their info from somewhere.

Come now. How about "The existence of the temples of the Greeks is more evidence there was a Zeus, because obviously they got their info from somewhere." or "The existence of the cult of Mormonism is more evidence there was an angel Moroni, because obviously they got their info from somewhere." or "The existence of the remains of sacrificed children in Mexico is more evidence there was a sun god, because obviously the Aztecs got their info from somewhere." You see? Religions make things up. They write them in books, they drum up popular support, they build temples, sacrifice, pray, do good deeds, burn "witches"... this is what religions do. You can't say that because a religion, in this case Christianity, exists, that this verifies their central tenet, that their god or the son of their god existed as well. It just doesn't follow. In fact, if Christ were a blurry myth, it'd be a lot easier to raise him up to the status of the son of god, because there'd be no one around to say "No, I was there, and he didn't heal the leper at all, he just gave him a loaf of bread." Reality is a pain in the neck when you're trying to create a mythology.

The things he did, on the other h

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

[edremy]

I've read a bunch of the analyses of early Christian texts and have sort of decided that Jesus did in fact exist as a historical person, simply because his entire story is so embarrassing in so many ways that the gospel writers and interpreters had to spend tons of energy explaining things away.

Jewish prophecy that the gospel writers needed Jesus to fulfill required that he be from Bethlehem. (Micah 5:1) But he wasn't- he was from Nazereth. So suddenly you have the entire census story being added in to get Mary to Bethlehem.
He was born a bastard. Oops- my bad, virgin birth.
He was betrayed by a follower. Ugh- well, bad things happened to Judas so it's ok. (Yet the entire sacrifical act was required for human salvation, so why exactly is Judas the bad guy again?)
He got himself executed messily. Um, that's what actually saves you! Yeah!
He was to return within the lifespan of those alive at the time. (Matt 24:34 and others) Christian apologists have had to dance around this one for almost 2000 years.

If you have a choice of making up a savior out of whole cloth rather than working with a real, historical person wouldn't you design someone better?

Re:Upright

[Bender0x7D1]

because trees should still be standing upright underground.

I'm assuming the the 30 foot high wave of water, mud and debris that rushed in to fill the area would have knocked over and snapped most of the trees.

Speculating already!

[dublinclontarf]

"It was drowned 300 million years ago in an earthquake, its discoverers speculate" They only just found this thing and they're giving it's life story. In other news: Archaeologists found a small piece of pottery near the site, they believe it to have been a pre-historic settlement. They have managed to reconstruct their entire society.... here's an artists impression. http://www.speedygrl.com/Racer/wallpaper/flintston es.jpg

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.

Not fuel!

[sunami]

I swear, I had to read that 3 times before I stopped seeing "fossilized fuel forest."

Re:Not fuel!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Good thing it's not, 'cause otherwise we'd be invading Illinois first thing tomorrow.

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:Upright

[Anonymous Coward]

Ordinary subsidence of the crust can do that (e.g., the modern Mississippi Delta continues to subside and slowly bury old swampland forests in sediment), but sudden drops due to earthquakes are well-known too. An excellent example is Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee, which was formed (or at least enhanced) due to ground shifts related to the 1812 New Madrid earthquake -- this was not far from Illinois.

Burial of trees happens all the time. Sites with fossil forests are known from all over the world. But having them exposed in a roof of a coal seam is quite cool, even though that isn't unknown either (e.g., in the area near Price, Utah -- some of the seams even have dinosaur footprints in their roof in addition to tree stumps).

The original article being referred to is in the latest issue of the journal Geology, but you have to be a subscriber to view it.

Re:Upright

[Anonymous Coward]

From the summary, which you obviously didn't read:

>>>Geologists are excited because the huge fossilized forest, over 25 square miles in extent, preserves trees and other plants upright, as they grew.

Some background information for folks.

[slashdotsyncline]

Hi,

One of the authors here (Scott Elrick - geologist from the Illinois State Geological Survey). I would be happy to answer questions from folks... or at least try!

I can start by giving a basic overview of the discovery, what we found, and how it is important (to paleobotanists that is).

The location of the fossils is just to the south and west of Danville, IL, itself about 30 miles to the east of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (say hi to HAL when you come to visit). The forest was found directly above the Herrin coal seam in the Riola and Vermillion Grove coal mines, owned by Black Beauty coal (a subsidiary of Peabody Energy). The mines cover approximately 15 square miles and the study area was about 4 square miles... actually 1000 hectares. (I'm rounding up the square miles)

Okay, so what's so cool? If you are a geologist and read the headlines that have been popping up about the story, you may have scoffed and shook your head saying, "What do they mean largest fossil forest? A coal seam is nothing but the fossil remnants of a fossil forest. And a coal seam like the Colchester coal extended from Pennsylvania all the way to Oklahoma!" And you are correct! (This is my first exposure to the modern day media... and its been an eye opener! Give them credit, they do a pretty god job overall)

What is 'largest' about this fossil forest story is that it is the largest STUDY of a mostly entact fossil forest. Specifically one that is looking at the ecology of that forest. The largest study before this that looked at the overall ecology was about 25 hectares.. say about 1/10th of a square mile. So this study is an order of magnitude greater. The meat of the matter here is that we had an opportunity to examine a fossil forest at just a wonderfully huge scale and as a result were able to see subtle changes in the make-up of the forest as we walked the multiple miles of passageways in the mine.

The analogy is that previous studies were like blindfolded people examining an elephant. Each person has a wonderfully detailed and accurate description of his or her patch of the elephant, and when they compare notes a decent group consensus exists as to what the elephant probably looks like... but nobody has a chance to see the whole elephant. Our study is where we get to step back from the elephant a bit and take a pretty good peak under the blindfold at the whole animal. (I wont go so far as to say we are able to clearly see the whole thing as that is stretching the analogy. The point being it is an important and exciting step forward, but not necessarily a monstrous revelation!)

A couple of things to highlight.

First, the part that I find the coolest about work like this. In much of geologic science (field aspects more so), geologists look at vast spreads of time in small geographic slices. For example, standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon and peering across to the other side, your eye takes in millions of years of geologic time... but you are only able to see a thin 'slice' of each unit in profile. What does a particular rock unit look like 500 feet into the side of the canyon walls? The only way to find out is to drill a hole and take a core sample.

Geologic research, or in this case paleontological research, in an underground mine such as these coal mines is orthogonal to the norm above! At these mines, looking up at preserved trees and ferns in the mine ceiling, we were looking at single slice of time, a T(0) event, over a huge (relatively speaking) geographic area. That means that we were able to get a snapshot in time look at the forrest landscape of 300 million years ago. It's the 'worms eye' view of a fossil forest.

I should point out that the 'discovery' of this fossil forest was a gradual process. One of the responsibilities of the Illinois State Geological Survey is to try to understand the geology of the state of Illinois... and for us in the coal section that means coworker John Nelson and I (also one of the aut

Re:Some background information for folks.

[slashdotsyncline]

An excellent question Assassin bug,

I've had a few emails on the very topic.

Howard Falcon-Lang and Bill Dimichele did find Eurypterid parts and pieces for certain and in some 'hashy' areas we may have found insect parts but it was hard to tell. Truthfully, the study area was so dang large that we were forced to really 'make tracks' to cover what we could, I am certain short-changing areas of interest such as your own in favor of the dominant plant fossils. I think I described the task to one reporter as trying to make a map of all the store fronts in New York city in a few days of walking the city, ending up with your 'chinatown area' ' little italy area' etc..

A shame now in retrospect that we didn't make more of an effort to look for those other parts of the system... but oh baby did we have a lot of ground to cover!

We do have representative samples from the mine roof that are currently in the Smithsonian collection, and hopefully Grimalidi can snag some time to give them a look over.

Re:Some background information for folks.

[slashdotsyncline]

Assassin bug asked nearly the same thing. We did find Eurypterid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_scorpion) pieces mixed in with the plant fossils and there is the possibility of some insect parts (legs, etc..) in some of the 'hashier' areas of the roof.

But, as I mentioned to Assassin bug, we had a LOT of territory to cover in fairly short amount of time, so we had to concentrate on the dominant plant fossils.

Your speculation on the moveable critters in the system 'getting the heck out of dodge' when the ground dropped out from underneath them may well be true. I would hope that at least some died and stayed put! Time (to collect data) was our enemy here.

I should probably have mentioned this before, but we are very thankful that Peabody Energy allowed us into the mine to study and record this wonderful fossil forest. It costs them man power and time to shepard us in their mines and they have been very supportive of our efforts. Truthfully, without them extracting the coal in the first place, we would never have been able to see the steady unveiling (10 years time!) of this 300 million year old snapshot in time.

Re:Some background information for folks.

[slashdotsyncline]

Yes!

We should have a website with detailed pictures and explanatory text online this by this Friday at the Illinois State Geological Survey home page:

www.isgs.uiuc.edu

look for a link on the 'recent news' portion.

(now guess what I get to do all day tomorrow...)

Re:Some background information for folks.

[slashdotsyncline]

Hi Richard!

It's a pleasure to be posting. I have been a super-ultra-long-time-gets-the-funny-all-your-base -jokes lurker for just about forever.

Part one of your question is asking if the catastrophic event of earthquake induced flooding be destructive to forest-floor plants. A very good question.

To answer that I'll steal some text that will be going on the website this Friday as written by Bill DiMichele to describe the ground cover plants and follow up afterward:

"Ground cover plants:

Plants inferred from their growth forms to have been ground cover are not common at Riola. This suggests that the soil surface may have been inhospitable to the growth of small plants, perhaps due to flooding.

One plant in particular, Sphenophyllum, was widespread throughout the mine but rare. Sphenophyllum (Images 51 & 52) is a sphenopsid, the same higher-level group that includes the horsetails. Like that group of plants, it has "node-internode" construction and its leaves and branches are borne in whorls. In this instance, however, the leaves are wedge-shaped, a distinctive attribute of these plants. Some Sphenophyllum species have hooks or barbs on their leaves, suggesting that they too formed thickets or tangles, and perhaps may have climbed other trees for support.

Another potential ground cover plant, a possible small fern or seed plant, is Sphenopteris (Image 53), which is rare in the Riola mine. Sphenopteris is characterized by small fronds that have small, variously lobed pinnules."

One reason to believe that the flooding, while catastrophic in the sense that it was sudden, may not have been particularly violent is the lack of strong linear orientation of both plants and logs, nor any preferred 'piling' of leaf litter and debris up against upright tree stumps. I personally would imagine the flooding of the forest to be in the multiple minutes category and not the 'large imposing' violent wave category. As Bill writes above, the ground surface may not have been conducive to thick luxuriant cover, but I also wonder to what degree the Sphenophyllum 'hooks and barbs' may have rooted them in place under flooding duress!

The second part of your question asks about the importance of smaller life being critical to an understanding of forest ecology.

You got that right! In modern forests the importance of 'smaller life' is undeniable.

In geology we are often forced by lack of data to fill in the gaps as best as we are able to infer. Or we are required to 'complete the puzzle' with the available puzzle pieces. Along those lines, much of the picture of these 300 million year old peat mires comes about through many many many individual finds and discoveries. A few insects here... an amphibian there... ground cover plants here... massive monster of tree there... a complete coal ball collection detailing plant diversities and general ecologies here... glimpses of many of these individuals (but not all unless you've got good karma) together in one spot there... etc.. Put all the individual puzzle pieces together and a cohesive picture starts to form.

For this particular study I feel pretty confident in saying that we are almost certainly missing big chunks of 'the little stuff'. For example, we may have seen some insect parts, but we can't be sure. Did they get swept away? Fly away? Hard to know. We are absolutely missing the entire ecological picture here and in that sense the answer to your question is a disappointing, "Nope, we don't have it all, so we don't have the honest to gosh whole picture"

But what this study does provide is some confirmation that the picture we have theorized about... i.e. we think the Pennsylvanian peat mire ecology looks like 'X' is correct. That the subtle variations in forest ecology that you would see walking down a hiking trail in your nearby state park ("Hmm, first I saw maples, and 300 feet later I saw a few oaks, and then the maples thinned out and the oaks were dominant"

Re:Some background information for folks.

[slashdotsyncline]

Hello!

If you check out the response to 'Puff of Logic' just above, I sort of touch on what we learned in the study. Essentially that the complexities and subtles of the ancient 300 million year old Pennsylvanian age peat mire forests are at a similar level as the forests of today.

The question of species evolution was not really the focus of this study, but I can say that some of the plants alive then such as the seed ferns have no modern day equivalent, whereas the long, crazy-tall reed-like plants called calamites have modern day equivalents (or closest relatives anyway) in horsetails. (a fairly common plant in water filled ditches).

DNA analysis is probably not possible, however, I am certainly not an expert in that area. A lot of the organic material has been cooked and in the case of the peat, cooked and compressed to form... (you guessed it!) Coal. So that is probably a dead end I'm afraid.

No new species were found, but we did have some head scratcher "What the heck is that?" "I don't know" "Get a sample, we'll see what we can figure out later" kind of stuff! And no, I don't think we have identified everything yet...

Re:Some background information for folks.

[slashdotsyncline]

To be honest, I really have not had much of that at all. Now, granted I live in a university town (UIUC) and am probably pretty insulated, but even heading out to various towns around the state for field work or otherwise I just really don't get much!

Of course, my sample is my state... Illinois, which probably swings in the middle or a little blue.

Thats not what you are asking though. You would like to know what I say to people who would prefer to believe the earth to be 6000 years old.

Now, I have not said this to any person in particular, but one thing that comes to mind that I find a bit humorous. Coal seams are sometimes considered by the '6000' groups to be the remnants of the great flood. The idea being that a great peat swamp from an indeterminate area was torn asunder during the great flood and then covered by sediments settling out from the great flood. The evidence then being the thick sediments found on top of the coal.

In the Illinois Basin there are 7 major coal seams (each covering a good percentage of Illinois in map view) and a total of about 80 minor coal seams all stacked (roughly speaking) vertically on top of each other with 'thick' sediment on top of each seam... So are we to infer that God was practicing his flooding technique?!? Eighty times??

Sorry, maybe it's just my sense of humor, but I think it's woth a chuckle.

Seriously, it seems to me that the core of the issue here is one of belief and personal belief, not of science or investigative logic. It is entirely possible to layout all the necessary proof and interconnected evidence in as grand a scheme as you desire towards proving a thing, but in the end when this discussion is broached you are no longer talking about ideas. A comment that is made against a belief is inevitably a vicous strike against the very essense of the person. In effect a personal attack... no mater what you say!

My real answer is not a satisfying one I'm afraid. In truth I prefer not to engage anyone who wants to combatively challenge me in 'belief match' contest. I certainly respect others beliefs, no matter how incorrect I think them to be, and hope they would respect mine, but in the end it is not a battle to be won. The battle, to the extent it is a battle anyway, is in education and getting people to ask questions, wonder why, wonder how, wonder who, and what.

Re:Some background information for folks.

[slashdotsyncline]

Hello jonfr,

The Royal Center fault, our candidate fault for the earthquake, is a deep crustal fault that is probably similar in character, though NOT in size or 'genetic affinity' to the huge crustal faults responsible for the present day Rocky Mountains. The examples you list in your post are indeed subduction zone related tectonics and the plate shifting up or down is a result of that close proximity.

The Royal Center would have been an intra-plate earthquake perhaps in a fashion similar to the New Madrid earthquakes of recent historical fame. (google New Madrid earthquake for a pleathora of interesting links!) As to the scale of our proposed earthquake, I'll readily admit to not knowing enough to intelligently speculate on exact magnitude, but to drop an area like this multiple feet at once, it probably wasn't small!

An excellent website on paleogeographic reconstructions and continental plates through time is Dr. Ron Blakey's (of Northern Arizona University) page here:

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/nam.html

In fact, check out his reconstruction for 300 million years ago here:

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/namPP300.jpg

Notice that this reconstruction shows all of Illinois to be covered by water. This is well supported in the geologic record here in Illinois. A repeating pattern of sea-level rise and fall, (we think caused by global glaciation taking up water to ice form and then melting away) has lead to the also repeated cycle of sea level fall, exposure of the land surface, colonization by land plants, then rise of sea level and covering with sediment. Repeat again and again. The geologic record shows this as a repeating rock pattern called a 'cyclothem'. Cyclothems being viewed throughout much of the Pennsylvanian period and much of the midcontinent of the U.S. (the Mississippian has a glacial overprint as well, though few coal measures)

In short, I just wanted to point out that showing a sea covering Illinois at 300 million years ago is not a mistake, the 300 million year time indicator in Dr. Blakey's image is a generalized one and shouldn't be taken to mean an absolute rigid date.

Thanks for the link to your earthquake page! I'll be sure to check it out!

Re:Some background information for folks.

[slashdotsyncline]

Interesting!

I admit to this being the first time I have heard of this idea so forgive me if I don't have a reasoned answer for you. (knowing ones ignorance is a good thing!)

I think some of the complicating factors in testing out this concept would be that there are major oil and coal deposits in the world of Jurassic (180 million to 140 million years ago) and Cretaceous (140 million to 65 million years ago) age, well after the arrival of heterotrophs.

Now it could be that the volume of oil and coal is less for these more recent time periods in comparison to the pre-heterotroph time, but I don't have any direct knowledge about this and you should consider the above speculation only!

I also wonder how the geographic arrangement of the continents over time has affected the productivity of these biologic dumping grounds. For example, the Pennsylvanian time period has just the right combination of climate, geographic distribution of land, sea and species to turn the then equatorial belts of central North America and Western Europe into veritable vegetation producing power houses. I would speculate that a different geographic setting.. say alot more ocean at the equator and less land could have produced a different biologic concentration.

I hasten to add though that this is the first I have thought about this and I'm figuratively spinning my wheels!

Aw crap...

[Cervantes]

Aw crap, an actual expert showed up ...

*sigh* CmdrTaco, close the doors, put up the sign, slashdot is now officially closed.

CleverNickName, time to end the charade... everyone deserves to know you're actually William (fucking) Shatner just pretending to be WW. Please let Wil out of your basement, his mother misses him.

Would all editors who are actually bots step forward? We have a betting pool going.

Rob, it's time to admit you never actually got married, and are still a virgin. Yes, yes, most of us bought it with the "Will you marry me" post, but after last years "OMG Ponies!"... well, let's just say that ruined any image of you as a heterosexual male.

Thanks everyone, for many fine years of uninformed and biased internet discussion. I know it was only a matter of time till an actual expert showed up, but still, I'm a little sad to see it all end. I'm not sure how I'll get my next chapter of the scientology books... but at least now I can safely view "the poisoned post" without forever losing my mod rights.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.
RIP /.
(Netcraft confirms it)
1997 - 2007

(PS: Thanks for the excellent, informative post, and congratulations on your find!) :D

Re:Aw crap...

[Cervantes]

Actually, I know how you feel... last year I made my once-daily visit to Slashdot, and saw the movie I'm working on had made the front page... it's a weird, yet great, feeling. :)

On more serious notes... it sounds like you only had a short time to explore this find. Did the mining company keep mining? Is this the kind of thing that (would have/should have/could have) been preserved as a historic artifact? Why wasn't it? Because it's too big, or the coal is too valuable, or it's something you can look at and then be done with and not have to preserve much of?

I thought peat bogs had aquatic creatures in them still. Shouldn't you have expected to find some sort of prehistoric salamanders or something trapped in there?

And because I'm a little unclear on the actual process... did you actually find organic (or formerly organic) material, or just the imprints thereof? I know this isn't bugs-in-amber kind of stuff, but what's the actual state of the items you found?

Re:Aw crap...

[slashdotsyncline]

Yeah, the fifteen minutes will probably run out any moment now!

Peabody Energy (owners of the coal mines) was extremely accommodating of our work in the mine. As they mined the coal, they exposed more and more roof shale for us to examine... and yes they kept on mining. We were able to easily go around their operations and stay out of their way.

I'm afraid you are correct in that it is something you look at, record and describe to the best of your ability and then take out the best samples you can. That's one of the reasons we try to visit the mines on a regular basis. To see what's going on geologically! Fortunately, you can go see a bit of this fossil forest today at the museum of science and industry in Chicago. When they remodeled their coal mining exhibit a few years ago (6 or 7 I think) Riola mine donated a big slab of shale containing plant fossils for display.

We did find a few pieces of a Eurypterid, a fossil 'sea-scorpian' but this was a plant dominated fossil assemblage and thats where we spent the majority of our time!

Good question about the state of the fossils. As you will be able to see from the pictures we post on Friday, most of the plants show up as carbonized impressions on the shale. Some of the plant material actually transforms all the way to coal if it was thick enough to begin with.

Re:Investing money in the young Earth

[dsanfte]

Well, "Faith" has a positive connotation that I'd prefer not to see ascribed to such intellectual laziness.