Historical survey of the floating mat model for the origin of Carboniferous coal beds

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.

Paleobotany supports the floating mat model for the origin of Carboniferous coal beds

“…Both early and later allochthonists of the French School used the "petrology-strata-paleobotany-environment" methodology to understand the origin of Carboniferous coal. The floating mat model has a robust three-hundred-year history that was summarized for the first time by Austin and Sanders (2018). About the same time as the French School of allochthonists was developing subaqueous notions for coal deposition and elaborating the drift model, another group of allochthonists already had an alternate understanding.…”

“…Paleobotanical observations favoring the floating mat model appear in the following pages. Austin and Sanders (2018) observed that historically the drift model and the floating mat model of allochthonists used the "petrology-stratapaleobotany-environment" methodology to understand the origin of Carboniferous coal.…”

“…Actually, the floating, aquatic nature of the aborescent lycopsids is based, not only on the interpretation of hollow stems and rhizomorphs (Austin and Sanders 2018), but on a suite of consilient lifestyle traits which are documented in Appendix A.…”

“…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. Our accompanying paper concerned the history of depositional models for the origin of Carboniferous coals (Austin and Sanders 2018). We sketched the familiar autochthonous versus allochthonous coal debate and argued that there are actually three depositional models for the origin of Carboniferous coals: (1) swamp model, (2) drift model, and (3) floating mat model.…”

Organic debris and allochthonous coal in Quaternary landforms within a periglacial setting (Longyearbyen Mining District, Norway) - A multi-disciplinary study (coal geology-geomorphology-sedimentology)

“…This point of view is, however, not left unchallenged and has been hotly debated during some period of time (Gastaldo, 1999). But still in the recent past attempts have been held necessary to clarify the origin of allochthonous to parautochthonous coal deposition mainly taking a sedimentary approach Glasspool, 2003;Zengxue et al, 2006;Austin and Sanders, 2018). The current study goes technically beyond this geological approach and makes use of a further geoscientific tool, geomorphology, which is frequently sidelined in economic geology, in general.…”