Show Coal Was Created i Before Human Advent What Is coal How was it made Well it all started many millions of years ago in what is called the Carboniferous Period We sometimes sometimes sometimes some some- times call it the Coal Age The climate was very warm wana and moist all over the earth There were heavy rains Plants grew fast and luxuriantly especially in swampy areas In our country these great swamps extended in all directions to where we find coal today in what is now Pennsylvania and the whole Appalachian range the I middle Atlantic states the Rocky Mountains and even the far away Pacific Coast The forest trees resembled giant ferns reeds and mosses rising to heights of to feet and many feet in diame diame- ter Other trees looked much like enormous ferns climbing 50 feet into the air Everything was green and lush lushin lushin lushin in this strange world The giant trees ferns grasses insect life and other creatures died fell into the swamps and became part of the sea life buried there Heavy rains washed soil soU and sand from high places into the swampy low low- lands Land gradually sank The great inland seas advanced and covered up these peat-like peat bogs keeping out air and bacteria that cause decay Again conditions on the earth changed The land was raised up and once more forests forest grew flourished and died Again the land sank and the seas ad ad- This process continued over and andover andover andover over through untold thousands of y yea years e a r s s. s The sunshine whose warmth and magic made these forests was buried hurled with the vege vege- tation Slowly the forests piled up one atop of the other the peat layers began changing into something something something some some- thing we now call lignite and the enormous deposits of dead leaves branches trunks insect life and sea life were transformed slowly Into coal and other minerals |