The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

Austin, S.A., and R.W. Sanders. 2018. Historical survey of the floating mat model for the origin of Carboniferous coal beds. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism , ed. J.H. Whitmore, pp. 277–286. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE FLOATING MAT MODEL FOR THE ORIGIN OF CARBONIFEROUS COAL BEDS Steven A. Austin , Cedarville University, 251 N. Main St., Cedarville, OH 45314. mudflowman@comcast.net Roger W. Sanders , Core Academy of Science, PO Box 1076, Dayton, TN 37321 rsanders4175@gmail.com ABSTRACT For three hundred years geologists and paleobotanists have been attempting to describe the process that deposited plant material that formed Carboniferous coal beds. Autochthonous and allochthonous explanations in the early Nineteenth Century showed how scientific methodology becomes involved in coal interpretation. Autochthonous modelers used the paleobotany-strata-petrology-environment method to argue that coal is a terrestrial swamp deposit. Allochthonous modelers used the petrology-strata-paleobotany-environment method to describe coal as a subaqueous deposit. The two methodologies are best displayed at the end of the Nineteenth Century in the consensus autochthonists versus the French School allochthonists. Three depositional models have been offered for the origin of coal: (1) peat swamp model, (2) drift model, and (3) floating mat model. Many paleobotany questions about lycopods and tree ferns had not been solved at the end of the Nineteenth Century, but the “floating mat model” offered a very robust path to direct research. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century when the uniformitarian paradigm prevailed, the floating mat model was intentionally suppressed. Now new data from coal petrology indicate that Carboniferous coal is detrital having accumulated underwater, not as a terrestrial swamp deposit. New data and methodology from paleobotany (Sanders and Austin, 2018) show lycopsids and tree ferns were capable of forming living floating mats able to support the trunks. Paleobotany of coal plants should now be best understood as supporting a floating raft that deposited the detritus that now forms Carboniferous coal beds. We present here for the first time a three-hundred-year historical survey of the notion that coal accumulated from floating vegetation mats. KEY WORDS floating mat model, origin of coal, Carboniferous paleobotany, paleoecology, tree lycopsids, Lepidophloios , Stigmaria , tree fern, Psaronius , sedimentary process, detrital deposition, coal petrology, stratigraphy, depositional environment. Copyright 2018 Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA www.creationicc.org 277 INTRODUCTION Coal is the rock formed from accumulated and altered plants. For 300 years coal has been recognized to have been derived from a material resembling modern peat. How did that accumulation occur to form prominent Carboniferous coal beds? This is a most interesting and controversial question with 300-year legacy. It is not a trivial question. As the most abundant fossil fuel, coal continues to be a primary source of energy, metallurgical coke and petrochemicals. Understanding coal utilization benefits from understanding coal’s formative processes. Vegetable, mineral and animal components within coal make it the most complex sedimentary rock. Those who focus study on this most complex rock are called coal petrologists. Complexity means coal contains an enormous amount of information. For hundreds of years geologists have been offering explanations of the origin of Carboniferous coal. That interest and controversy associated with coal’s legacy continues actively among geologists to the present. Among geologists, two broad categories of depositional models for Carboniferous coals have been debated for three hundred years. The prevailing uniformitarian explanation of coal formation supposes coal beds to be authigenic and autochthonous (manufactured through a soil-forming environment from plants grown in place) and deposited within coastal swamps, delta plains or river levee environments. The enduring catastrophist explanation, never silenced during hundreds of years, supposes coal beds to be detrital and allochthonous (water-borne detritus transported to the submerged surface of sedimentation) and, likely, associated with rafts of floating vegetation. We present here for the first time a three-hundred-year historical summary of the notion that coal accumulated from floating vegetation mats. ROOT OF CONTROVERSY Advocates of autochthonous Carboniferous coal devised paleoecological interpretations of plant fossils, especially rootlike structures of lycopods. These paleobotanical ideas are placed within strata sequences to assign the different rock layers to terrestrial swamp, floodplain and levee environments. Among the most famous early advocates of autochthony of Carboniferous coals (arguing from paleobotany through stratigraphy and petrology to paleoenvironment) were the field geologists Charles Lyell and John Dawson. Lyell (1855) and Dawson (1854) examined the rootlike fossil named Stigmaria in sandstones and shales at Joggins in Nova Scotia. They also described fossil lycopod trunks standing upright in shale strata, but they didn’t find them within coal beds. These upright trunks were interpreted to have formed in situ within fossil soils containing Stigmaria , and the associated coal beds were considered to be autochthonous, formed in large, topographically elevated, freshwater mires. Later at Joggins assemblages of upright trunks were supposed to represent in situ “fossil forests” on an elevated area. Among the autochthonous