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Thursday, April 26, 2007
Fossilized rain forest found in Illinois
An entire ancient rainforest has been discovered, fossilized, in an Illinois coal mine. Three hundred million years ago, an earthquake pulled four square miles of the forest just below sea level and buried it in mud, preserving it for eternity. From National Geographic:
LinkThe forest... features an abundance of huge leaf impressions, large trunks of extinct trees, and tree-size horsetail plants, the researchers (from the Illinois State Geological Survey) said...
Geologist John Nelson, also with ISGS, found the fossils in 2004 when he was visiting the mine and noticed plant imprints in its shale-covered ceiling.
Elrick said, "Imagine an artist's canvas that's covered in gray flat paint—that's what gray shale kind of looks like.
"The plant fossils stand out in that grayness as black impressions, and they look just like pressed leaves in a book.
"As [workers] continued to mine, they exposed more and more fossils," he added.
posted by David Pescovitz at 09:38:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
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