Delineation of the distinctive nature of tertiary coal beds

Palynological evidence of vegetation dynamics in response to palaeoenvironmental change across the onset of the Paleocene‐Eocene Thermal Maximum at Cobham, Southern England

“…However, the offshore brackish lagoonal environment of the lower Woolwich Shell Beds presumably received runoff from the land so that the charcoal they contained might be derived from erosion of pre-existing charcoal-rich deposits. This observation of reduced fire in the Eocene is also suggested by the low percentage of inertinites (charcoal) in Eocene coals worldwide (Shearer et al, 1995)) and the rarity of macroscopic charcoal in most Eocene sediments (Scott, 2000, M.E.C., A.C.S., J.J.H., personal observations).…”

A high-resolution benthic stable-isotope record for the South Atlantic: Implications for orbital-scale changes in Late Paleocene–Early Eocene climate and carbon cycling

“…Low-latitude peat extent in the early Paleogene is likely to have been sensitive to changes in precipitation patterns, in the same way that African lake levels are strongly correlated to precession-driven changes in precipitation in the Pleistocene, with eccentricity as an additional modulator (e.g., Trauth et al, 2007). High eccentricity (high precession) would have driven more seasonally uneven rainfall on the continents creating "monsoon like" conditions (e.g., Short et al, 1991;Crowley et al, 1992;Rutherford and D'Hondt, 2000) less conducive to the storage of organic matter, and leading to periodic variations in the flux of carbon to and from the soil reservoirs .…”

Termites (Isoptera): Their Phylogeny, Classification, and Rise to Ecological Dominance

“…Tropical ecosystems where termites are most abundant and diverse have notoriously thin humus layers (Richards, 1996). This may explain why coals that were formed prior to the appearance of termites in the Paleozoic and Early Mesozoic, and in largely the same regions and habitats, decomposed less (i.e., contained significantly more vitrain) than Tertiary and modern peats (Shearer et al, 1995;Raymond et al, 2000), as well as the formation of some vast reservoirs of petroleum, like those in the Early Cretaceous Nubian sandstones of present-day Africa and the Middle East. While some Miocene coal formations are astonishingly thick (Shearer et al, 1995) 0100---00 0--0--1020 1-0-----10 0112100010 00200 Periplaneta sp.…”