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 thunderbay rated 18 months ago- Ancient Rainforest Revealed in Illinois Coal Mine
"The largest ever found, the fossil forest covers an area of about 40 square miles, or nearly the size of San Francisco. This ancient assemblage of flora is thought to be one of the first rainforests on Earth, emerging during the Upper Car...
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12 Reviews
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- magsimprov rated 18 months ago
- Finding a fossilized forest- wish I could see it.
- digits rated 18 months ago
- "Scientists exploring a mine have uncovered a natural Sistine chapel showing not religious paintings, but incredibly well preserved images of sprawling tree trunks and fallen leaves that once breathed life into an ancient rainforest." Fascinating!
- Koosalagoopagoop rated 18 months ago
- Cooooool. a new part of our earth history is revealed. I wonder what's next that a T-Rex came from a chicken...
- Snookered rated 18 months ago
- From the page: "Miners in Illinois are used to seeing a few plant fossils strewn along a mine%u2019s ceiling, but as they burrowed farther into this one, the sheer density and area covered by such fossils struck them as phenomenal, Elrick said.
That%u2019s when they called paleobotanist Howard Falcon-Lang from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and William DiMichele, a curator of fossil plants at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. "
- Zaktto rated 18 months ago
- Nice Article but StumbleUpon users are becoming as bad as Digg users when it comes to reviews.
- chummers rated 18 months ago
- From the page: Scientists exploring a mine have uncovered a natural Sistine chapel showing not religious paintings, but incredibly well preserved images of sprawling tree trunks and fallen leaves that once breathed life into an ancient rainforest.
- MarieNStL rated 18 months ago
- where was this coal mine?
- abbyfay rated 18 months ago
- How cool!
- thunderbay rated 18 months ago
- Ancient Rainforest Revealed in Illinois Coal Mine
"The largest ever found, the fossil forest covers an area of about 40 square miles, or nearly the size of San Francisco. This ancient assemblage of flora is thought to be one of the first rainforests on Earth, emerging during the Upper Carboniferous, or Pennsylvanian, time period that extended from about 310 million to 290 million years ago.
A reconstruction of the ancient forest showed that like today's rainforests, it had a layered structure with a mix of plants now extinct: Abundant club mosses stood more than 130-feet high, towering over a sub-canopy of tree ferns and an assortment of shrubs and tree-sized horsetails that looked like giant asparagus." No wonder dinosaurs were so large ... giant asparagus and moss. wow
- starxgemini rated 18 months ago
- How cool is this!
From the page: "Scientists exploring a mine have uncovered a natural Sistine chapel showing not religious paintings, but incredibly well preserved images of sprawling tree trunks and fallen leaves that once breathed life into an ancient rainforest. "
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