The Paleozoic Worldpages.geo.wvu.edu/~kammer/g3/PaleozoicEnv.pdfCoal Deposits •Most of the...
Transcript of The Paleozoic Worldpages.geo.wvu.edu/~kammer/g3/PaleozoicEnv.pdfCoal Deposits •Most of the...
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Outline 17:
The Paleozoic World
Shallow marine and
terrestrial facies
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Shallow marine facies
• Sea level was much higher than today
during much of the Paleozoic.
• Shallow epicontinental seas flooded
continental interiors.
• Rocks with marine fossils are common
in the centers of continents.
• Beach deposits like Seneca Rocks are
also common.
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Barrier Islands,
bays, and
continental shelf
on the New
Jersey coast.
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Barrier Islands, bays, and continental shelf
on the Gulf Coast.
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Devonian Sedimentation in WV
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Devonian Sedimentation in WV
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http://www.nvcc.edu/home/cbentl
ey/gol_135/sideling_hill/images/
VR_stratigraphy.jpg
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Seneca Rocks – Paleozoic barrier island
deposits; folded and turned on end.
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GEOLOGY 200 Students
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GEOLOGY 200 Students
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Seneca Rocks is a limb of the
Wills Mountain Anticline
Jack Renton
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Barrier islands in the subsurface
Time Lines
Time Lines
Modern Barrier Island
Wire line logs
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Coal Deposits
• Most of the world’s coal deposits
formed during the Carboniferous.
Why?
• Woody plants evolved in the
Devonian. These are the plants that
form coal.
• Carbon dioxide levels were 10X higher
in the early Paleozoic.
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Coal Deposits
• Carbon dioxide levels were reduced to
modern levels by the end of the
Paleozoic.
• What happened to all that CO2?
• The carbon was converted to wood,
then to peat, then to coal. The oxygen
was released to the atmosphere.
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Chemical Formulas
• Photosynthesis:6H2O + 6CO2 C6H12O6 (sugar) + 6O2
• Sugar forms cellulose or wood:C6H10O5 (cellulose) + H2O
• Wood changes to peat, lignite, bituminous coal, and anthracite under heat and pressure:
C6 (coal) + 5H2O
• Anthracite is almost pure carbon
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Copyright ©1999 by the National Academy of Sciences
Berner, Robert A. (1999) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96, 10955-10957
No Caption Found
Paleozoic Mesozoic Cenozoic
Carboniferous
Atmospheric Oxygen Record
Present
Level
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Coal Deposits
• Did extensive coal ever form again?
• CO2 levels increased again in the
Cretaceous and the early Cenozoic, the
only other times of significant coal
formation.
• Very little coal is forming today.
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The Nile Delta.
Shaped like the
Greek letter
delta.
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The
Mississippi
River delta
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A meandering stream with a sandy point bar
on the inside curve, and a cut bank on the
outside curve. The point bar dips toward the
stream channel.
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Pennsylvanian point bar deposits on WV
Rt. 19 near Fayetteville.
coal seampoint bar surfaces
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A modern swamp in Louisiana
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Model for Pennsylvanian coal formation
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WV
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Carboniferous
forest with scale
trees
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Lycopodium,
descendant of
scale trees
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WVU Students: Fossil tree in Wyoming coal mine
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Upper Freeport Coal with overlying fluvial
sandstones deposited by meandering river.
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Coal outcropping in Morgantown.
Can be up to 10 ft. thick.
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Coal Mining Methods
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Underground mine. Limestone dust
sprayed on the coal to reduce coal dust.
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Underground Machines
Longwall ShearerContinuous Miner
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Mountain top removal
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Drag Line on Mountaintop Mine
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These are big shovels
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Final Reclamation
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Wyoming coal seams are up to
100 ft. thick!
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Wyoming coal seams are up to
100 ft. thick!
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Truck from previous photo
with WVU Field Campers
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Cyclothems
• Cyclothems are cyclic sequences of
marine and nonmarine facies. The
facies are repeated. Counted by coals.
• Repeated fluctuations of sea level
produced the cyclothems.
• Sea level fluctuations associated with
fluctuating glaciers on Gondwana.
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Cyclothems
• There are about 50 cyclothems in the
Illinois Coal Basin. These are tied to
worldwide changes in sea level.
• There are about 90 cyclothems in the
WV Coal Basin. The extra 40 were
caused by delta shifting as rivers
changed courses.
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Pennsylvanian
cyclothems
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Pennsylvanian Cyclothems in Kentucky –
count the coals
12
3
45
6
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Pennsylvanian rocks of the Pittsburgh Fm. on
I-79 near Carnegie. White rocks are
freshwater limestones.
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Cyclothems are
created by alternating
transgression and
regression of
epicontinental seas.
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Delta Shifting on the Mississippi Delta.
Delta shifting can form local cyclothems.
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A modern marine transgression is exposing
Holocene peat deposits on the Louisiana coastline.
This transgression is caused by subsidence
associated with delta shifting.
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Model of coal formation for Pennsylvania
cyclothems. (Stanley, Fig. 15-28)
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U.S. Coal Production
• Wyoming is #1 overall in tonnage. Coal is
sub-bituminous, and low in sulfur.
• West Virginia is #2 overall, but #1 east of
the Mississippi River. Coal is bituminous
and has 3X more BTUs than Wyoming
coal, but is higher in sulfur.
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Coalfields of the United States