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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 04/22/2011 : 06:21:43
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Well, no, he’s not working in the hole with a pick & shovel, but he’s certainly digging.
Shark Jaw Opens Questions about Coal Formation
by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
While bolting the roof of a coal mine in western Kentucky, miner Jay Wright found an 18-inch-long fragment of a fossil shark jawbone with teeth still attached. The local National Public Radio affiliate WKMS reported that "Wright has seen smaller fossils and sea shells in the mine, but nothing like an ancient shark bone."1
The standard textbook story is that coal seams were formed when millions of years of plant debris accumulated into peat bogs at the bottom of ancient swamps.
"The partial decomposition of plant remains in an oxygen-poor swamp creates a layer of peat, a soft, brown material in which plant structures are still easily recognized. With shallow burial, peat is changed to lignite, a soft, brown coal," according to one textbook.2
But if that's the case, then how did a huge shark find its way into a swamp?
The standard coal-formation scenario presents other unexplained puzzles. For example, modern peat bogs are thoroughly penetrated by roots. Coal seams show no trace of these root masses.3 And today's swamp peats do not contain sea shells!
Geologist Stephen Austin proposed an alternative scenario for coal formation, one that fits the data much better than the swamp idea: A catastrophic flood event ripped up whole ancient forests, and then transported plant and animal debris into low-lying areas. A subsequent series of tsunami-like waves then carried sediments over the top of the plant debris.
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And so forth.
What we have here is the presupposition that the Earth is only 6,000 or so years old. There is no evidence to support that beyond wind from the pulpits.
It takes a lot pressure and heat, and not a little time to make coal. Most if not all of it was formed in the Carboniferous, about 360 to 280 mya. This was the golden age of sharks and there were plenty of them about.
Mr Wright made a splendid find, but it is not a first.
| Jerry Weisenfluh from the Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS) investigated the find after hearing about it. Professor Frank Ettensohn at the University of Kentucky estimates the shark the jaw belonged to could have been more than 6 meters long. The shark is thought to be from the upper Middle Pennsylvanian Period (over 300 million years old). Researchers at the KGS noted that Edestus jaw fossils have been found before in Kentucky in the Springfield and Herrin coal beds. |
Something else our Brian overlooks is that this fossil was found in Kentucky, which is about as far from the ocean as you can get without a struggle. Why then, are fossils of sea creatures so common there -- the biblical flood presupposition has been debunked everywhere ad nauseum. Could it be that KY was once covered by a sea? Why yes, I do believe that it was.
Keep diggin’, Brian. Sooner or later, you’ll find gold.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Brian Thomas: Workin' in the Coal Mine
