The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
The BioEdOnline article states that the era in which the trees were first buried occurred when the North America and Europe land masses were physically connected at the equator—during the Carboniferous era (from about 260 to 300 million years ago, at a time of glaciation and mountain building, and when many beds of coal were first being developed. The fossilized trees helped to develop many of these coal regions.
According to the BioEdOnline article, “The forest was discovered in 2005 by John Nelson of the Illinois State Geological Survey, who was making routine measurements in a mine in Vermilion County. He called in a team of palaeontologists to investigate the forest. As they drove down to 100 metres below ground, they saw the forest's remains in the glare from their miners' lamps as they looked up at the ceiling.”
Dr. Falcon-Lang, a member of the ISGS team stated, "You actually see roots coming down; you see tree trunks lying in the ceiling.”
The discovery of the forests is important to scientists because it helps to learn more about how rainforests contended with warming conditions that existed hundreds of millions of years ago, and now exist today. It also assists scientists in understanding the complex evolution of forests, which have existed for hundreds of millions of years.
The underground forest discovered in Illinois shows the variety of plant species that existed in various regions of the forests. The ancient forest most likely reached a maximum height of about 130 feet (40 meters). Some of the plants found include clubmosses, horsetails, mangrove-like plants, and ferns—in all, about fifty different plant species are thought to exist in the fossilized forests.
A paper summarizing the discovery and the research on the fossilized forest in Illinois is found in the journal Geology. It is entitled “Ecological gradients within a Pennsylvanian mire forest,” and authored by William A. DiMichele, Howard J. Falcon-Lang, W. John Nelson, Scott D. Elrick and Philip R. Ames (May 2007; v. 35; no. 5; p. 415–418; doi: 10.1130/G23472A).
Additional information, along with a large number of photographs, is found on the ISGS website “A 300 Million Year Old Pennsylvanian Age Mire Forest.” (I really suggest looking at this website. There are quite a number of up-close pictures showing the fossils and the entire process of finding these fossils.)
David Bass
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