Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Fossil forest


Check out this article from BBC.com about some spectacularly preserved plant fossils discovered in an underground coal mine in Illinois.

"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 miners' lamps.", said Dr. Falcon-Lang from the University of Bristol.

Look for the paper in the journal Geology.

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