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

broken mats or even docked (“beached”) mats. Over the three hundred years, scholars have pondered the possible role that floating vegetation may have had in forming coal beds. Austin (1979) introduced the term “floating mat model” in reference to the origin of coal. The term “floating mat model” seems broad enough to include deposits from both living or dead floating vegetation, and general enough to include various vegetation types (“algal mats,” “floating marshes,” and “floating tree islands”). The term “floating mat” directs our thoughts first toward the buoyant substrate of the raft of vegetation, which is likely the dominant source of detritus. EARLIEST THOUGHTS ON FLOATING MAT MODEL The French botanist Antoine de Jussieu (l718) was digging fernlike impressions and marine shell fossils from Carboniferous shale near Saint Chaumont. As he continued digging the fern impressions became more black and bituminous as they passed into the bed of coal. He believed these impressions and coal represent tropical plants unlike those in France today. He supposed that tropical plants were picked up by flood waters, floated great distance when the ocean covered the continent, and finally deposited in high country in France. He noted the texture of plants in coal resembles the flat lying fragments on the floor of the French herbarium. Jussieu was one of the earliest advocates of a floating mat model for the origin of coal. Among the earliest to argue strenuously for the vegetable origin of Carboniferous coal were the British mineral surveyor John Williams (1810) and the British surgeon and paleontologist James Parkinson (1811). They disputed with James Hutton and John Playfair (the authors of uniformitarian theory) who supposed coal to be formed, not from vegetation, but from asphalt impregnating mud. Williams (1810) believed coal to be made from transported timbers: “I am of the opinion that the antediluvian timber floated upon the chaos or waters of the deluge, … and that during the height of the deluge and the time in which the greatest part of the strata were forming, the timber was preparing and fitted for being deposited in strata of coal.” Parkinson (1811) added to Williams by stressing that woody particulates (not timbers) formed coal, and that the original substance of coal resembled modern peat. Parkinson described in extraordinary detail what he calls “large floating islands” associated with modern swamps. These islands form in lakes when submerged peat breaks loose and floats abruptly to the surface. He knew that new vegetation could enlarge floating peat by plant growth, but recognized that floating islands generally break apart and are dispersed as fragments on the surface of modern lakes. Parkinson reasoned how coal would be deposited during the catastrophic deluge in reverse of the modern floating island scenario. Dispersed floating woody fragments were once collected to form a raft of floating peat, which later sprouted vegetation, and, which during the deluge, was transported and sank to make coal. It was further refinement of the floating mat model. Also, as the famous professional surgeon, Parkinson was first to described the neuro-muscular disorder later called Parkinson’s disease, and, through surgery, was first to demonstrate that severe appendicitis is caused by perforation at the surface of the human appendix. The history of the floating mat model resumes with the work of the Scottish stratigrapher Roderick Murchison (famous among geologists for defining the Silurian System). Murchison (1845, p. 114) described the Carboniferous coal of the Donetz Basin in Russia and wrote about its formation “… by the sinking into the adjacent sea of floating masses of matted earth and plants.” Murchison imagined marine floating mats: “… when the bottom of the sea was spread over with the detritus of matted and Austin and Sanders ◀ Historical survey of floating mat model ▶ 2018 ICC 279 Figure 1. Floating islands on the Congo River, a print by A. Goering, published in 1883 by Die Gartenlaube , Germany’s first mass-circulation newspaper. Circulated from Leipzig, hometown of Otto Kuntze, this illustration and its artist inspired Kuntze to publish in 1884 his “floating forest” illustration that is Figure 2