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Historical Survey Of The Floating Mat Model For The Origin Of Carboniferous Coal Beds, Steven Arthur Austin, Roger W. Sanders

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

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 …