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

Both distanced themselves from the French allochthonists who thought about coal being an aqueous accumulation of transported terrestrial-forest detritus (what petrologists call a “allochthonous, detrital texture”). Lesquereux and Kuntze did not favor detritus being shed from themat to forma submerged peat layer as postulated by Gresley. Both recognized the deficiency of phytogenic sediment being moved out of modern terrestrial swamps by modern rivers, an observation they understood to favor the mat idea. The turn of the century was a critical junction for the floating mat model. Lesquereux, Breton, Kuntze and Gresley had developed the concept. Support came fromAlbert Seward (1895a, b), the British paleobotanist at Cambridge University: “…the weight of evidence seems to tip the balance of opinion very materially towards the theory of drifting, and subaqueous sedimentation, for the majority of Paleozoic coal seams.” Seward liked the floating mat model and acknowledged the model of Lesquereux and Gresley, but Seward did not mention Breton or Kuntze. Alfred Lane (1902), the state geologist of Michigan, extensively reviewed Kuntze’s terminology and model applying it to Michigan coal beds. Lane mentions paleontologist Carl L. Rominger, another state geologist of Michigan, who endorsed the Stigmaria -floating-stem theory of Lesquereux and Kuntze. An interesting episode occurred at the annual meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1900. That is where state-of-the-art metallurgy, manufacturing technology and natural resources were discussed. Prominent on the meeting program was the session in Bradford, England titled “The Origin of Coal.” We know about several of the presenters and their papers from the anonymous “notes” of the meeting that were published in the Journal after the meeting (no authors’papers were published). According to the notes (Anonymous 1900) the prominent British geologist Aubrey Strahan discussed “rooted” underclays, erect tree trunks in sandstone and persistent partings within coal, what are called “clear proof of a drifted origin” and evidence of “subaqueous deposits.” Also at the 1900 meeting was the British paleobotanist from Cambridge University A.C. Seward who discussed subaqueous deposition of plant debris: “Hence he [A.C. Seward] thought that the seams were not the result of growth in one place, nor of drifting, but of the accumulation of vegetable debris , derived chiefly from plants growing on the surface of large lakes and pools near the borders, where they died and were carried out by gently flowing water and sank to the bottom over the whole water area” (Anonymous 1900, p. 432). The meeting notes describe some of the interesting discussion as replies, proving that scientific model building was occurring by critical evaluation of evidence. By 1900 there were actually three general explanations of the origin of coal: (1) swamp model, (2) drift model, and (3) floating mat model. Underappreciated was the problem resident in all explanations of coal, not just within the floating mat model, of the immensity of scale that seemed to be required. Gresley, who appreciated the matter well, was uncomfortable in imaging the Pittsburgh Coal being accumulated under a mat expansive through a minimum area of 15,000 square miles. Göppert following Murchison’s idea, also struggled with scale but had to admit that is what the strata seem to indicate. Strahan’s sedimentation proposal obviously had to explain very thin strata of wide extent. This can be called the “its-too-big problem.” Austin and Sanders ◀ Historical survey of floating mat model ▶ 2018 ICC 281 Figure 2. Floating mats according to Kuntze (1884). Ancient tree islands were constructed by lycopods that grew on top of the water (left center), and occasionally sank (as depicted in lower center).