India has vast coal reserves in the eastern river valleys. Estimates suggest this coal supply could last at least 500 years.
We have learned that coal is just the dead remains of ancient forests that fell to their deaths in peatland. We almost take it for granted because we don’t ask how it formed. Is this a simple explanation of the full story?
The problem with this matter is that palaeontologists know that the prime consumers of wood in the natural world, the termites, evolved only after an event called the "Great Dying." This was the worst mass extinction event in our planet’s geological history.
This period also coincides with the halting of the formation of coal! And this event is termed the "Coal Gap."
Although the distribution of plant life and the heterotrophs that depend on them changed dramatically after the Permian mass extinction, this does not explain why coal stopped forming so abruptly.
I am not saying that ever since the Great Dying, no coal has formed; it’s just that the amount and quality of coal which have formed during the time after the Coal Gap are not the same.
During the Carboniferous Period around 300 million years ago, there were unimaginably huge forests, which got that big in the first place due to the high temperatures and oxygen surplus.
As these forests died, they fell and piled up, not necessarily in swampy conditions, but just on the forest floor.
Over time, the underground pressure and temperature lithified them into a rock by driving out the volatile matter and leaving only a carbon residue.
So, the history of coal turns out to be more interesting than we ever thought.
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