Global Warming? - Rain Forest Fossils Probed in Illinois

[Guest guest]

Hey y'all,

 

With all the crazy (and cold) weather the USA and Europe has

experienced lately some of us are glad we have a tad of Global Warming

now .. it is keeping us from freezing. ;-)

 

For sure the climate of Ol' Mama Earth has been in a constant state of

change since it first began to cool off .. and likely this change will

continue without regard to the efforts of mankind. :-P Butch

 

 

Rain Forest Fossils Probed in Illinois

 

David Mercer, Associated Press

 

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/24/rainforest_pla_print.html

 

April 24, 2007 — 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. "

 

2007 Discovery Communications Inc.

[Guest guest]

The whole climate change debate reminds me of

Pascal's wager: why not believe, since it won't

harm you any and it just might save your soul.

If you were wrong, and death is just oblivion after

all, you'll never know.

 

Apart from the fact that ol' Blaise adhered to a

form of religion that sucked a lot of joy out of life,

and that he never explained why one should pick

his particular form of belief, the idea had merit.

 

So, when it comes to Global Warming as man-made:

Earth and Sun have danced a lot of dances and made

some interesting turns before. It may well be that

our input is not the deciding factor.

 

But what if it is?

What do we have to lose by cleaning up our act

before we choke on our own wastes?

 

Ien in the Kootenays

http://freegreenliving.com

 

 

[Guest guest]

But what if it is?

What do we have to lose by cleaning up our act

before we choke on our own wastes? ¶

 

[Dave:] Ien, your logic is perfect. You’d never make it as a politician.