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Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. [3] [4] Coal is used primarily as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited until the Industrial Revolution.
The Carboniferous rainforest collapse was caused by a cooler drier climate that initially fragmented, then collapsed the rainforest ecosystem. [2] During most of the rest of Carboniferous times, the coal forests were mainly restricted to refugia in North America (such as the Appalachian and Illinois coal basins) and central Europe.
Coal forms when organic matter builds up in waterlogged, anoxic swamps, known as peat mires, and is then buried, compressing the peat into coal. The majority of Earth's coal deposits were formed during the late Carboniferous and early Permian. The plants from which they formed contributed to changes in the Carboniferous Earth's atmosphere. [25]
The marine environment ranged from deep pelagic, submarine fan systems in the lower deposits which grade steadily north-eastwards to shallow marine deposits including shelf (continental) marine and marginal marine facies, and finally to beach deposits in younger successions. Coal-bearing fluvial-deltaic, and peatbog settings are also well known ...
In lithostratigraphy, coal measures are coal-bearing strata, with the term typically applied to European units of the Upper Carboniferous System. In the United Kingdom, the term is equivalent to regional components of the Westphalian -age Coal Measures Group .
Historically, the term was defined by the European coal geologists [2] who worked in coal basins formed during the Carboniferous and earliest Permian periods. Depositional sequences have been thoroughly studied by oil geologists using geophysical profiles of continental and marine basins.
Vast deposits of coal formed in wetlands—called coal forests—that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. [37] [38] Bituminous coal is predominantly Carboniferous in age. [3] [39] Most bituminous coal in the United States is between 100 and 300 million years old. [40]
The Pennine Coal Measures Group is preceded (underlain) by the Millstone Grit Group which is of Namurian age. It is succeeded (overlain) by the Warwickshire Group which comprises a largely non-productive sequence of red beds. [3] [4] Descriptions of the coal seams are found within (or linked from) articles on the individual coalfields. Many of ...