http://www.nature.com/...
Just a little more history swept under the rug under the Bush administration. How can there be a 300 million year old fossilised forest, if the earth was created about 6,000 years ago?
Geologists have found the remains of a huge underground rainforest hidden in a coal mine in Illinois. The fossil forest, buried by an earthquake 300 million years ago, contains giant versions of several plant types alive today.
This is a treasure that needs to be preserved.
The Senators of Illinois Obama and Durbin need to get up on this.
More after the fold.
He and his team found the remains of tree-sized clubmosses, horsetails and ferns — plants that today grow 2 or 3 metres tall, but in the ancient forest reached heights of up to 40 metres.
This looks a little to like evolution for this administration.
The forest's long life will now be cut short — the mine is likely to collapse in the next few years and there are no plans to preserve it for the sake of the fossils. But Falcon-Lang is philosophical about losing the forest, pointing out that if it weren't for mining, the forest would never have been discovered in the first place.
Talk about burying the lead.
From Bristol University
It was discovered by Dr Howard Falcon-Lang from the University of Bristol, UK, and US colleagues, in the underground workings of a coalmine, in Illinois, USA. The results of this work are published online today in Geology, by the Geological Society of America....
"It was an amazing experience. We drove down the mine in an armoured vehicle, until we were a hundred metres below the surface. The fossil forest was rooted on top of the coal seam, so where the coal had been mined away the fossilized forest was visible in the ceiling of the mine.
"We walked for miles and miles along pitch-black passages with the fossil forest just above our heads. We were able to make a map of the forest by the light of our miner’s lamps."
The fossil forest is the largest ever found, covering over 10,000 hectares, an area 10 km by 10 km
It is so lucky that we ever found this wonder. We should try to save it. It needs to be studied with a little more detail. But this would cost money and we are stuck in Iraq. These Young Earth creationists need to be exposed as fanatics.
The rise of fundamentalist Christianity at the start of the twentieth century saw a revival of interest in Young Earth creationism, as a part of their rejection of the explanation of evolution.
These 300 million year old fossils only help us understand evolution better. I assume there are numerous unidentified species in that cave. Do you think we should try to save these fossils. Is it even possible?
http://abcnews.go.com/... ends their story like this.
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."
But the truth is all we are letting them do is take pictures and drawings. This is not enough in my mind.
Cool pic here,
Riola mine and the Vermillion Grove mine, which are located in Vermillion County, just south of Danville, Ill.
MSNBC added this...They do not mention the collapse.