Carboniferous period. Best years. Carboniferous period, animals of the Carboniferous period

According to the hydride theory of V. Larin, hydrogen, which is the main element in our Universe, did not evaporate from our planet at all, but, due to its high chemical activity, formed various compounds with other substances even at the stage of the formation of the Earth, thus becoming part of its composition. bowels And now the active release of hydrogen in the process of decay of hydride compounds (that is, compounds with hydrogen) in the core of the planet leads to an increase in the size of the Earth.

It seems quite obvious that such a chemically active element will not pass thousands of kilometers through the thickness of the mantle "just like that" - it will inevitably interact with its constituent substances. And since carbon is one of the most common elements in the Universe and on our planet, the preconditions for the formation of hydrocarbons are created. Thus, one of the side effects of V. Larin's hydride theory is the version of the inorganic origin of oil.

On the other hand, according to the established terminology, hydrocarbons in the composition of oil are usually called organic substances. And so that the rather strange phrase “inorganic origin of organic substances” does not arise, we will continue to use the more correct term “abiogenic origin” (that is, non-biological). The version of the abiogenic origin of oil in particular, and hydrocarbons in general, is far from new. Another thing is that it is not popular. Moreover, to a large extent due to the fact that in different versions of this version (an analysis of these variants is not the task of this article), ultimately there remain many ambiguities in the question of the direct mechanism for the formation of complex hydrocarbons from inorganic starting materials and compounds.

The hypothesis of the biological origin of oil reserves is incomparably more widespread. Under this hypothesis, oil was formed overwhelmingly in the so-called Carboniferous period (or Carboniferous - from the English "coal") from the processed organic remains of ancient forests under conditions of high temperatures and pressures at a depth of several kilometers, where these remains allegedly fell as a result of vertical movements of geological layers. Peat from the numerous swamps of the Carboniferous under the influence of these factors allegedly turned into different types of coal, and under certain conditions - into oil. In such a simplified version, this hypothesis is presented to us at school as an already “reliably established scientific truth”.

Tab. 1. The beginning of geological periods (according to radioisotope studies)

The popularity of this hypothesis is so great that few even thought about the possibility of its fallacy. Meanwhile, everything is not so smooth in it!.. Very serious problems in the simplified version of the biological origin of oil (in the form described above) arose in the course of various kinds of studies of the properties of hydrocarbons from various fields. Without going into the complex subtleties of these studies (such as right and left polarization and the like), we only state that in order to somehow explain the properties of oil, we had to abandon the version of its origin from simple vegetable peat.

And now you can even meet, for example, such statements: "Today, most scientists say that crude oil and natural gas originally formed from marine plankton." A more or less savvy reader may exclaim: “Sorry! But plankton is not even plants at all, but animals! And he will be absolutely right - by this term it is customary to mean small (even microscopic) crustaceans that make up the main diet of many marine life. Therefore, some of this "majority of scientists" still prefer the more correct, although somewhat strange term - "planktonic algae" ...

So, it turns out that once these very “planktonic algae” somehow ended up at depths of several kilometers along with bottom or coastal sand (otherwise it is generally impossible to figure out how “planktonic algae” could be not outside, but inside geological layers ). And they did it in such quantities that they formed billions of tons of oil reserves!.. Just imagine such quantities and scale of these processes!.. What?!. Doubts are already appearing?.. Isn't it?..

Now another problem. In the course of deep drilling on different continents, oil was discovered even in the thickness of the so-called Archean igneous rocks. And this is already billions of years ago (according to the accepted geological scale, the question of the correctness of which we will not touch on here)! .. However, more or less serious multicellular life appeared, as it is believed, only in the Cambrian period - that is, only about 600 million years back. Before that, there were only single-celled organisms on Earth!.. The situation becomes generally absurd. Now only cells should participate in the processes of oil formation!..

Some kind of “cellular-sandy broth” should quickly sink to depths of several kilometers and, in addition, somehow end up in the middle of solid igneous rocks! .. Doubts about the reliability of the “reliably established scientific truth” increase? for a while, look from the bowels of our planet and turn our eyes upward - to the sky.

At the beginning of 2008, sensational news spread around the media: the American spacecraft Cassini discovered on Titan, a satellite of Saturn, lakes and seas of hydrocarbons! stock will run out soon. After all, these creatures are strange - people! .. Well, if hydrocarbons were somehow able to form in huge quantities even on Titan, where it is difficult to imagine any kind of "planktonic algae" at all, then why should one limit oneself to the framework of only the traditional theory of biological origin oil and gas?.. Why not admit that hydrocarbons were formed on the Earth in a non-biogenic way?..

True, it is worth noting that only methane CH4 and ethane C2H6 were found on Titan, and these are only the simplest, lightest hydrocarbons. The presence of such compounds, say, in gas giant planets such as Saturn and Jupiter, was considered possible for a long time. The formation of these substances in an abiogenic way, in the course of ordinary reactions between hydrogen and carbon, was also considered possible. And it would be possible not to mention the discovery of Cassini in the question of the origin of oil, if not for a few “buts” ...

The first "but". A few years earlier, the media spread another news, which, unfortunately, turned out to be not as resonant as the discovery of methane and ethane on Titan, although it deserved it. Astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasingh and his colleagues at Cardiff University put forward a theory of the origin of life in the depths of comets, based on results obtained during the 2004-2005 flights of the Deep Impact and Stardust spacecraft to comets Tempel 1 and Wild 2, respectively.

In Tempel 1, a mixture of organic and clay particles was found, and in Wild 2, a whole range of complex hydrocarbon molecules were found - potential building blocks for life. Let's leave aside the theory of astrobiologists. Let us pay attention to the results of studies of cometary matter: they are talking about complex hydrocarbons! ..

The second "but". Another piece of news, which also, unfortunately, did not receive a decent response. The Spitzer Space Telescope has detected some of the basic chemical components of life in a cloud of gas and dust orbiting a young star. These components - acetylene and hydrogen cyanide, gaseous precursors of DNA and proteins - were first recorded in the planetary zone of a star, that is, where planets can form. Fred Lauis of the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands and his colleagues discovered these organic substances near the star IRS 46, which is located in the constellation Ophiuchus at a distance of about 375 light-years from Earth.

The third "but" is even more sensational.

A team of NASA astrobiologists from the Ames Research Center published the results of a study based on observations by the same Spitzer orbiting infrared telescope. In this study, we are talking about the discovery in space of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, in which nitrogen is also present.

(nitrogen - red, carbon - blue, hydrogen - yellow).

Organic molecules containing nitrogen are not just one of the foundations of life, they are one of its main foundations. They play an important role in the entire chemistry of living organisms, including photosynthesis.

However, even such complex compounds are not just present in outer space - there are a lot of them! According to Spitzer, aromatics literally abound in our universe (see Figure 2).

It is clear that in this case any talk about "planktonic algae" is simply ridiculous. And consequently, oil can be formed in an abiogenic way! Including on our planet!.. And V. Larin's hypothesis about the hydride structure of the earth's interior provides all the necessary prerequisites for this.

A snapshot of the M81 galaxy, 12 million light years away from us.

Infrared emission from nitrogen-containing aromatic hydrocarbons shown in red

Moreover, there is one more “but”.

The fact is that in the conditions of a hydrocarbon deficit at the end of the 20th century, oilmen began to open those wells that were previously considered already devastated, and the extraction of oil residues in which was previously considered unprofitable. And then it turned out that in a number of such mothballed wells ... oil has increased! And it increased in a very tangible amount! ..

You can, of course, try to attribute this to the fact that, they say, the reserves were not very correctly estimated earlier. Or oil flowed from some nearby, unknown to the oilmen, underground natural reservoirs. But there are too many miscalculations - the cases are far from isolated! ..

So it remains to be assumed that oil has really increased. And it was added from the bowels of the planet! V. Larin's theory receives indirect confirmation. And in order to give it a completely "green light", the matter remains small - you just need to decide on the mechanism for the formation of complex hydrocarbons in the earth's interior from the original components.

Soon the fairy tale tells, but not soon the deed is done ...

I am not so strong in those sections of chemistry that relate to complex hydrocarbons to fully understand the mechanism of their formation on my own. Yes, my area of ​​interest is somewhat different. So this question could continue to be in a “pending state” for me for quite a long time, if not for one accident (although who knows, maybe this is not an accident at all).

Sergei Viktorovich Digonsky, one of the authors of the monograph published by the Nauka publishing house in 2006 under the title Unknown Hydrogen, contacted me by e-mail and literally insisted on sending me a copy of it. And having opened the book, I could no longer stop and literally swallowed its contents with a vengeance, even despite the very specific language of geology. The monograph just contained the missing link! ..

Based on their own research and a number of works of other scientists, the authors state:

“Given the recognized role of deep gases, ... the genetic relationship of natural carbonaceous substances with juvenile hydrogen-methane fluid can be described as follows.1. From the gas-phase system C-O-H (methane, hydrogen, carbon dioxide) ... carbonaceous substances can be synthesized - both in artificial conditions and in nature ... 5. Pyrolysis of methane diluted with carbon dioxide under artificial conditions leads to the synthesis of liquid ... hydrocarbons, and in nature - to the formation of the entire genetic series of bituminous substances. gas mixture with high mobility; juvenile - contained in the depths, in this case in the Earth's mantle.)

Here it is - oil from hydrogen contained in the bowels of the planet! .. True, not in a "pure" form - directly from hydrogen - but from methane. However, due to its high chemical activity, no one expected pure hydrogen. And methane is the simplest combination of hydrogen with carbon, which, as we now know for sure after the discovery of Cassini, is also in huge quantities on other planets ...

But what is most important: we are not talking about some theoretical research, but about conclusions drawn on the basis of empirical studies, references to which the monograph abounds so much that it is pointless to try to list them here!..

We will not analyze here the most powerful geopolitical consequences that follow from the fact that oil is continuously generated by fluid flows from the earth's interior. Let us dwell only on some of those that are relevant to the history of life on Earth.

Firstly, there is no longer any point in inventing some kind of "planktonic algae" that, in a strange way, once plunged to kilometer depths. It's a completely different process.

And secondly, this process continues for a very long time up to the present moment. So there is no point in singling out any separate geological period during which the planet's oil reserves supposedly formed.

Someone will notice that, they say, oil does not fundamentally change anything. After all, even the very name of the period, with which its origin was previously correlated, is associated with a completely different mineral - with coal. That's why he is the Carboniferous period, and not some kind of "Oil" or "Gas-Oil" ...

However, in this case, one should not rush to conclusions, since the connection here turns out to be very deep. And in the quote above, it is not in vain that only points numbered 1 and 5 are indicated. It is not in vain that the ellipsis is repeatedly used. The fact is that in the places I deliberately omitted, we are talking not only about liquid, but also about solid carbonaceous substances !!!

But before restoring these places, let's return to the accepted version of the history of our planet. More precisely: to that segment of it, which is called the Carboniferous period or Carboniferous.

I will not philosophize slyly, but simply give a description of the Carboniferous period, taken almost at random from a couple of some of the countless sites that replicate quotes from textbooks. However, I will capture a little more history “at the edges” - late Devon and early Perm - they will be useful to us in the future ...

The climate of Devon, as shown by the masses of characteristic red sandstone rich in iron oxide that have survived since then, was dry, continental over significant stretches of land, which does not exclude the simultaneous existence of coastal countries with a humid climate. I. Walter designated the area of ​​the Devonian deposits of Europe with the words: "The ancient red continent." Indeed, bright red conglomerates and sandstones, up to 5000 meters thick, are a characteristic feature of Devon. Near Leningrad (now: St. Petersburg), they can be observed along the banks of the Oredezh River. In America, the early stage of the Carboniferous period, characterized by maritime conditions, was previously called the Mississippian due to the thick limestone stratum that formed within the modern Mississippi River valley, and now it is attributed to the lower department of the Carboniferous period. In Europe, throughout the entire Carboniferous period, the territories of England, Belgium and northern France were mostly flooded by the sea, in which powerful limestone horizons were formed. Some areas of southern Europe and southern Asia were also flooded, where thick layers of shale and sandstone were deposited. Some of these horizons are of continental origin and contain many fossil remains of terrestrial plants, and also contain coal-bearing layers. In the middle and end of this period, in the interior of the North America (as well as in Western Europe) was dominated by lowlands. Here, shallow seas periodically gave way to marshes, in which powerful peat deposits accumulated, subsequently transformed into large coal basins that stretch from Pennsylvania to eastern Kansas. Some of the western regions of North America were inundated by the sea during most of this period. Layers of limestones, shales and sandstones were deposited there. In countless lagoons, river deltas, swamps in the littoral zone, a lush, warm and moisture-loving flora reigned. Colossal amounts of peat-like plant matter accumulated in places of its mass development, and, over time, under the influence of chemical processes, they were transformed into vast deposits of coal. Perfectly preserved plant remains are often found in coal seams, indicating that during the Carboniferous period on Earth has a lot of new groups of flora. At that time, pteridospermids, or seed ferns, were widely spread, which, unlike ordinary ferns, reproduce not by spores, but by seeds. They represent an intermediate stage of evolution between ferns and cycads - plants similar to modern palms - with which pteridospermids are closely related. New groups of plants appeared throughout the Carboniferous, including progressive forms such as cordaite and conifers. The extinct cordaites were usually large trees with leaves up to 1 meter long. Representatives of this group actively participated in the formation of coal deposits. Conifers at that time were just beginning to develop, and therefore were not yet so diverse. One of the most common plants of the Carboniferous were giant tree clubs and horsetails. Of the former, the most famous are lepidodendrons - giants 30 meters high, and sigillaria, which had a little more than 25 meters. The trunks of these clubs were divided at the top into branches, each of which ended in a crown of narrow and long leaves. Among the giant lycopsids there were also calamites - tall tree-like plants, the leaves of which were divided into filamentous segments; they grew in swamps and other wet places, being, like other club mosses, tied to water. But the most wonderful and bizarre plants of the carbon forests were, without a doubt, ferns. The remains of their leaves and stems can be found in any major paleontological collection. Tree-like ferns, reaching from 10 to 15 meters in height, had a particularly striking appearance, their thin stem was crowned with a crown of complexly dissected leaves of bright green color.

Forest landscape of Carboniferous (according to Z. Burian)

On the left in the foreground are calamites, behind them are sigillaria,

to the right in the foreground is a seed fern,

in the distance in the center - a tree fern,

on the right, lepidodendrons and cordaites.

Since the Lower Carboniferous formations are poorly represented in Africa, Australia, and South America, it can be assumed that these territories were predominantly in subaerial conditions. In addition, there is evidence of widespread continental glaciation there. At the end of the Carboniferous period, mountain building was widely manifested in Europe. Mountain ranges stretched from southern Ireland through southern England and northern France to southern Germany. This stage of orogeny is called the Hercynian, or Varisian. In North America, local uplifts occurred at the end of the Mississippian period. These tectonic movements were accompanied by marine regression, the development of which was also facilitated by the glaciation of the southern continents. In the Late Carboniferous, sheet glaciation spread on the continents of the Southern Hemisphere. In South America, as a result of marine transgression penetrating from the west, most of the territory of modern Bolivia and Peru was flooded. The flora of the Permian period was the same as in the second half of the Carboniferous. However, the plants were smaller and not as numerous. This indicates that the climate of the Permian period became colder and drier. According to Walton, the great glaciation of the mountains of the southern hemisphere can be considered established for the Upper Carboniferous and pre-Permian time. Later, the decline of the mountainous countries gives rise to the ever-increasing development of arid climates. Accordingly, variegated and red-colored strata develop. We can say that a new "red continent" has emerged.

In general: according to the "generally accepted" picture, in the Carboniferous period we have literally the most powerful surge in the development of plant life, which with its end came to naught. This surge in the development of vegetation allegedly served as the basis for deposits of carbonaceous minerals.

The process of formation of these fossils is most often described as follows:

This system is called coal because among its layers are the thickest interlayers of coal, which are known on Earth. Seams of coal originated due to the charring of plant remains, buried in masses in sediments. In some cases, accumulations of algae served as the material for the formation of coals, in others - accumulations of spores or other small parts of plants, in others - the trunks, branches and leaves of large plants. Plant tissues slowly lose some of their constituent compounds released in the gaseous state, while some, and especially carbon, are pressed by the weight of the sediments that have fallen on them and turn into coal. The following table, taken from the work of Y. Pia, shows the chemical side of the process. In this table, peat is the weakest stage of charring, anthracite is the last one. In peat, almost all of its mass consists of easily recognizable, with the help of a microscope, parts of plants, in anthracite they are almost absent. It can be seen from the table that the percentage of carbon increases as the carbonization progresses, while the percentage of oxygen and nitrogen decreases.

in minerals (Yu.Pia)

First, peat turns into brown coal, then into hard coal, and finally into anthracite. All this happens at high temperatures, which lead to fractional distillation. Anthracites are coals that are changed by the action of heat. Pieces of anthracite are filled with a mass of small pores formed by bubbles of gas released during the action of heat due to the hydrogen and oxygen contained in the coal. The source of heat could be the proximity to eruptions of basalt lavas along the cracks of the earth's crust. Under the pressure of layers of sediments 1 km thick, a layer of brown coal 4 meters thick is obtained from a 20-meter layer of peat. If the depth of burial of plant material reaches 3 kilometers, then the same layer of peat will turn into a layer of coal 2 meters thick. At a greater depth, about 6 kilometers, and at a higher temperature, a 20-meter layer of peat becomes a layer of anthracite 1.5 meters thick.

In conclusion, we note that in a number of sources, the chain "peat - lignite - coal - anthracite" is supplemented with graphite and even diamond, resulting in a chain of transformations: "peat - lignite - coal - anthracite - graphite - diamond" ...

The vast amount of coal that has been feeding the world's industry for a century points to the vast expanse of swampy forests of the Carboniferous era. Their formation required a mass of carbon extracted by forest plants from carbon dioxide in the air. The air lost this carbon dioxide and received in return a corresponding amount of oxygen. Arrhenius believed that the entire mass of atmospheric oxygen, determined at 1216 million tons, approximately corresponds to the amount of carbon dioxide, the carbon of which is preserved in the earth's crust in the form of coal. Even Kene in Brussels in 1856 argued that all the oxygen in the air was formed in this way. Of course, this should be objected to, since the animal world appeared on Earth in the Archean era, long before the Carboniferous, and animals cannot exist without sufficient oxygen content both in the air and in the water where they live. It is more correct to assume that the work of plants on the decomposition of carbon dioxide and the release of oxygen began from the very moment of their appearance on Earth, i.e. since the beginning of the Archean era, as indicated by the accumulations of graphite, which could have been obtained as the end product of the charring of plant residues under high pressure.

If you do not look closely, then in the above version, the picture looks almost flawless.

But it so often happens with "generally accepted" theories that for "mass consumption" an idealized version is issued, which in no way includes the existing inconsistencies of this theory with empirical data. Just as the logical contradictions of one part of an idealized picture with other parts of the same picture do not fall ...

However, since we have some alternative in the form of the potential possibility of the non-biological origin of the mentioned minerals, what is important is not the “combing” of the description of the “generally accepted” version, but how this version correctly and adequately describes reality. And therefore, we will be primarily interested not in the idealized version, but, on the contrary, in its shortcomings. And therefore, let's look at the picture drawn from the standpoint of skeptics ... After all, for objectivity, you need to consider the theory from different angles. Is not it?..

First of all: what does the above table say? ..

Yes, almost nothing!

It shows a sample of just a few chemical elements, from the percentage of which in the above list of fossils there is really simply no reason to draw serious conclusions. Both in relation to the processes that could lead to the transition of fossils from one state to another, and in general about their genetic relationship.

And by the way, none of those presenting this table bothered to explain why these particular elements were chosen, and on what basis they are trying to make a connection with minerals.

So - sucked from the finger - and normal ...

Let's omit the part of the chain that touches wood and peat. The connection between them is hardly in doubt. It is not only obvious, but actually observable in nature. Let's move on to brown coal ...

And already at this link in the chain one can find serious flaws in the theory.

However, some digression should first be made, due to the fact that for brown coals, the "generally accepted" theory introduces a serious reservation. It is believed that brown coal was formed not only under somewhat different conditions (than hard coal), but also at a different time in general: not in the Carboniferous period, but much later. Accordingly, from other types of vegetation ...

The marshy forests of the Tertiary period, which covered the Earth approximately 30-50 million years ago, gave rise to the formation of brown coal deposits.

Many species of trees were found in brown-coal forests: conifers from the genera Chamaecyparis and Taxodium with their numerous aerial roots; deciduous, for example, Nyssa, moisture-loving oaks, maples and poplars, heat-loving species, for example, magnolias. The dominant species were broad-leaved species.

From the lower part of the trunks, one can judge how they adapted to the soft marshy soil. Coniferous trees had a large number of stilted roots, deciduous trees had cone-shaped or bulbous trunks expanded downwards.

Lianas, twining around tree trunks, gave the brown-coal forests an almost subtropical look, and some types of palm trees that grew here also contributed to this.

The surface of the marshes was covered with leaves and flowers of water lilies, the banks of the marshes were bordered by reeds. There were many fish, amphibians and reptiles in the reservoirs, primitive mammals lived in the forest, birds reigned in the air.

Brown coal forest (according to Z. Burian)

The study of plant remains preserved in coals made it possible to trace the evolution of coal formation - from older coal seams formed by lower plants to young coals and modern peat deposits, characterized by a wide variety of higher peat-forming plants. The age of the coal seam and associated rocks is determined by the species composition of the remains of plants contained in the coal.

And here is the first problem.

As it turns out, brown coal is not always found in relatively young geological layers. For example, on one Ukrainian site, the purpose of which is to attract investors to the development of deposits, the following is written:

“... we are talking about a brown coal deposit discovered in the Lelchits region back in Soviet times by Ukrainian geologists from the Kirovgeologiya enterprise. three well-known - Zhitkovichi, Tonezh and Brinevo. In this group of four, the new deposit is the largest - approximately 250 million tons. In contrast to the low-quality Neogene coals of the three named deposits, the development of which still remains problematic, the Lelchitsy brown coal in the Lower Carboniferous deposits is of higher quality. The working calorific value of its combustion is 3.8-4.8 thousand kcal / kg, while Zhitkovichi has this figure in the range of 1.5-1.7 thousand. An important characteristic is humidity: 5-8.8 percent versus 56-60 for Zhitkovichi. The thickness of the formation is from 0.5 meters to 12.5. The depth of occurrence - from 90 to 200 meters or more is acceptable for all known types of mining.

How can it be: brown coal, but lower carbon? .. Not even upper! ..

But what about the composition of plants?.. After all, the vegetation of the Lower Carboniferous is fundamentally different from the vegetation of much later periods - the “generally accepted” time of the formation of brown coals ... Of course, one could say that someone messed up something with the vegetation, and it is necessary to focus on the conditions for the formation of Lelchitsy brown coal. Say, because of the peculiarities of these conditions, he simply “did not reach a little” to the bituminous coals that were formed in the same period of the Lower Carboniferous. Moreover, in terms of such a parameter as humidity, it is very close to “classical” hard coal. Let's leave the riddle with vegetation for the future - we will return to it later ... Let's look at brown and hard coal precisely from the standpoint of chemical composition.

In brown coals, the amount of moisture is 15-60%, in hard coals - 4-15%.

No less serious is the content of mineral impurities in coal, or its ash content, which varies widely - from 10 to 60%. The ash content of the coals of the Donetsk, Kuznetsk and Kansk-Achinsk basins is 10-15%, Karaganda - 15-30%, Ekibastuz - 30-60%.

And what is “ash content”?.. And what are these very “mineral impurities”?..

In addition to clay inclusions, the appearance of which in the process of accumulation of the initial peat is quite natural, among the impurities most often mentioned ... sulfur!

In the process of peat formation, various elements enter the coal, most of which are concentrated in the ash. When coal is burned, sulfur and some volatile elements are released into the atmosphere. The relative content of sulfur and ash-forming substances in coal determines the grade of coal. High-grade coal has less sulfur and less ash than low-grade coal, so it is in greater demand and more expensive.

Although the sulfur content of coals can vary from 1 to 10%, most coals used in industry have a sulfur content of 1-5%. However, sulfur impurities are undesirable even in small quantities. When coal is burned, most of the sulfur is released into the atmosphere as harmful pollutants called sulfur oxides. In addition, the admixture of sulfur has a negative impact on the quality of coke and steel smelted on the basis of the use of such coke. Combining with oxygen and water, sulfur forms sulfuric acid, which corrodes the mechanisms of coal-fired thermal power plants. Sulfuric acid is present in mine waters seeping out of waste workings, in mine and overburden dumps, polluting the environment and preventing the development of vegetation.

And here the question arises: where did sulfur come from in peat (or coal) ?!. More precisely: where did it come from in such a large number ?!. Up to ten percent!

I'm ready to bet - even with my far from complete education in the field of organic chemistry - such amounts of sulfur have never been in wood and could not be! .. Neither in wood nor in other vegetation that could become the basis of peat, in the future transformed into coal! .. There is less sulfur by several orders of magnitude! ..

If you type in a search engine a combination of the words "sulfur" and "wood", then most often only two options are displayed, both of which are associated with the "artificial and applied" use of sulfur: for wood conservation and for pest control. In the first case, the property of sulfur to crystallize is used: it clogs the pores of the tree and is not removed from them at ordinary temperatures. In the second, they are based on the toxic properties of sulfur, even in small quantities.

If there was so much sulfur in the original peat, then how could the trees that formed it grow at all? ..

And how, instead of dying out, on the contrary, all those insects that bred in incredible numbers in the Carboniferous period and at a later time felt more than comfortable? .. However, even now the swampy area creates very comfortable conditions for them ...

But sulfur in coal is not just a lot, but a lot! .. Since we are talking about even sulfuric acid in general! ..

And what's more: coal is often accompanied by deposits of such a useful sulfur compound in the economy as sulfur pyrite. Moreover, the deposits are so large that its extraction is organized on an industrial scale! ..

…in the Donets Basin, the extraction of coal and anthracite of the Carboniferous period also proceeds in parallel with the development of the iron ores mined here. Further, among the minerals, one can name limestone of the Carboniferous period [The Church of the Savior and many other buildings in Moscow were built from limestone exposed in the vicinity of the capital itself], dolomite, gypsum, anhydrite: the first two rocks as a good building material, the second two as a material for processing into alabaster and, finally, rock salt.

Sulfur pyrite is an almost constant companion of coal and, moreover, sometimes in such quantity that it makes it unfit for consumption (for example, coal from the Moscow basin). Sulfur pyrite is used to produce sulfuric acid, and from it, by metamorphization, those iron ores, which we spoke about above, originated.

This is no longer a mystery. This is a direct and immediate discrepancy between the theory of coal formation from peat and real empirical data!!!

The picture of the "generally accepted" version, to put it mildly, ceases to be ideal ...

Now let's go directly to coal.

And help us here ... creationists are such fierce supporters of the biblical view of history that they are not too lazy to grind a bunch of information, just to somehow adjust reality to the texts of the Old Testament. The Carboniferous period - with its duration of a good hundred million years and which took place (according to the accepted geological scale) three hundred million years ago - does not fit in with the Old Testament, and therefore creationists diligently look for flaws in the "generally accepted" theory of the origin of coal ...

“If we consider the number of ore-bearing horizons in one of the basins (for example, in the Saarbrug basin in one layer of approximately 5000 meters there are about 500 of them), then it becomes obvious that the Carboniferous within the framework of such a model of origin should be considered as a whole geological epoch that took time many millions of years ... Among the deposits of the Carboniferous period, coal can in no way be considered as the main component of fossil rocks. Separate layers are separated by intermediate rocks, the layer of which sometimes reaches many meters and which are empty rock - it makes up most of the layers of the Carboniferous period ”(R. Juncker, Z. Scherer,“ History of the Origin and Development of Life ”).

Trying to explain the features of the occurrence of coal by the events of the Flood, creationists confuse the picture even more. Meanwhile, this very observation of them is very curious!.. After all, if you look closely at these features, you can notice a number of oddities.

Approximately 65% ​​of fossil fuels are in the form of bituminous coal. Bituminous coal is found in all geological systems, but mainly in the Carboniferous and Permian periods. Initially, it was deposited in the form of thin layers that could extend over hundreds of square kilometers. Bituminous coal often shows traces of the original vegetation. 200-300 such interlayers occur in the northwestern coal deposits of Germany. These layers are from the Carboniferous period, and they run through 4000 meters of thick sedimentary layers, which are stacked one on top of the other. The layers are separated from each other by layers of sedimentary rocks (eg sandstone, limestone, shale). According to the evolutionary/uniformist model, these layers are supposed to have formed as a result of repeated transgressions and regressions of the seas at that time into coastal swamp forests over a total of about 30–40 million years.

It is clear that the swamp can dry out after some time. And on top of the peat, sand and other sediments typical of accumulation on land will accumulate. The climate may then become wetter again, and the swamp re-forms. This is quite possible. Even multiple times.

Although the situation is not with a dozen, but with hundreds (!!!) of such layers, it is somewhat reminiscent of a joke about a man who stumbled, fell on a knife, got up and fell again, got up and fell - “and so thirty-three times” ...

But even more dubious is the version of a multiple change in the regime of sedimentation in those cases when the gaps between the coal seams are no longer filled with sediments characteristic of land, but with limestone! ..

Limestone deposits are formed only in reservoirs. Moreover, limestone of this quality, which takes place in America and Europe in the corresponding layers, could form only in the sea (but not in lakes at all - it turns out to be too loose there). And the "generally accepted" theory has to assume that in these regions there has been a multiple change in sea level. Which, without batting an eyelid, she does...

In no epoch did these so-called secular fluctuations occur so often and intensely, albeit very slowly, as in the Carboniferous period. Coastal expanses of land, on which abundant vegetation grew and buried, sank, and even significantly, below sea level. Conditions gradually changed. Sands and then limestones were deposited on the ground swampy deposits. In other places, the opposite happened.

The situation with hundreds of such successive dives/ascents, even for such a long period, no longer even resembles a joke, but complete absurdity!..

Furthermore. Let us recall the conditions of coal formation from peat according to the "generally accepted" theory!.. To do this, peat must sink to a depth of several kilometers and fall into conditions of high pressure and temperature.

It is foolish, of course, to assume that a layer of peat accumulated, then sank several kilometers below the surface of the earth, transformed into coal, then somehow ended up again on the very surface (albeit under water), where an intermediate layer of limestone accumulated, and finally, it all ended up on land again, where the newly formed swamp began to form the next layer, after which such a cycle was repeated many hundreds of times. This version of events looks completely delusional.

Rather, it is necessary to assume a slightly different scenario.

Let's assume that vertical movements did not occur every time. Let the layers accumulate first. And only then the peat was at the required depth.

It all looks so much more reasonable. But…

Again there is another "but"! ..

Then why didn't the limestone accumulated between the layers also undergo metamorphization processes?!. After all, he had to turn into marble at least partially! .. And such a transformation is not even mentioned anywhere ...

It turns out some kind of selective effect of temperature and pressure: they affect some layers, but not others ... This is not just a discrepancy, but a complete discrepancy with the known laws of nature! ..

And in addition to the previous one - another small fly in the ointment.

We have quite a few deposits of coal, where this fossil lies so close to the surface that it is mined in an open way. And, in addition, the layers of coal are often located horizontally.

If in the course of its formation coal at some stage was at a depth of several kilometers, and then rose higher in the course of geological processes, retaining its horizontal position, then where did the very kilometers of other rocks that were above the coal and under the pressure of which it formed?

Did the rain wash them all away?

But there are even more obvious contradictions.

So, for example, the same creationists noticed such a rather common strange feature of coal deposits as the non-parallelism of its different layers.

“In extremely rare cases, coal seams lie parallel to each other. Nearly all hard coal deposits at some point split into two or more separate seams (Figure 6). The combination of an already almost fractured layer with another, located above, from time to time appears in the deposits in the form of Z-shaped joints (Fig. 7). It is difficult to imagine how two superimposed strata should have arisen from the deposition of growing and replacing forests if they are connected to each other by crowded groups of folds or even Z-shaped joints. The connecting diagonal layer of the Z-shaped connection is particularly striking evidence that both layers that it connects were originally formed simultaneously and were one layer, but now they are two horizontal lines of petrified vegetation located parallel to each other ”(R. Juncker, Z .Scherer, "History of the origin and development of life").

Formation fault and crowded groups of folds in the lower and middle

Bochum deposits on the left bank of the lower Rhine (Scheven, 1986)

Z-junctions in the middle Bochum layers

in the Oberhausen-Duisburg area. (Scheven, 1986)

Creationists are trying to “explain” these oddities in the occurrence of coal seams by replacing the “stationary” swampy forest with some kind of “floating on water” forests ...

Let's leave alone this “replacement of sewing with soap”, which actually changes absolutely nothing and only makes the overall picture much less likely. Let us pay attention to the fact itself: such folds and Z-shaped joints fundamentally contradict the “generally accepted” scenario of the origin of coal!.. And within the framework of this scenario, folds and Z-shaped joints cannot be explained at all!.. data ubiquitous!

What?.. Enough doubts about the “ideal picture” have already been sown?..

Well then, let me add a little...

On fig. 8 shows a petrified tree passing through several layers of coal. It seems to be a direct confirmation of the formation of coal from plant residues. But again there is a "but" ...

Polystrate wood fossil, penetrating several coal layers at once

(from R. Juncker, Z. Scherer, "The History of the Origin and Development of Life").

It is believed that coal is formed from plant residues during the process of coalification or charring. That is, during the decomposition of complex organic substances, leading to the formation of “pure” carbon under conditions of oxygen deficiency.

However, the term "fossil" suggests something different. When people talk about petrified organics, they mean the result of the process of replacing carbon with siliceous compounds. And this is a fundamentally different physical and chemical process than coalification!..

Then for Fig. 8, it turns out that in some strange way, in the same natural conditions with the same source material, two completely different processes simultaneously occurred - petrification and coalification. Moreover, only the tree was petrified, and everything else around was coalified!.. Again, some kind of selective action of external factors, contrary to all known laws.

Here's to you, father, and St. George's day! ..

In a number of cases, it is stated that coal was formed not only from the remains of whole plants, or at least mosses, but even from ... plant spores (see above)! They say that microscopic spores accumulated in such quantity that, being compressed and processed in conditions of kilometer depths, they gave coal deposits of hundreds, or even millions of tons !!!

I don’t know about anyone, but such statements seem to me to go beyond not just logic, but common sense in general. And after all, such nonsense is quite seriously written in books and replicated on the Internet! ..

Oh, times!.. Oh. morals!.. Where is your mind, Man!?.

It is not even worth going into the analysis of the version of the originally plant origin of the last two links in the chain - graphite and diamond. For one simple reason: there is nothing to be found here except purely speculative and far from real chemistry and physics rantings about some "specific conditions", "high temperatures and pressures", which ultimately results only in such an age of the "original peat" that exceeds all conceivable boundaries of the existence of any complex biological forms on Earth ...

I think that on this it is already possible to finish “dismantling the bones” of the well-established “generally accepted” version. And move on to the process of collecting the resulting "fragments" in a new way into a single whole, but on the basis of a different - abiogenic version.

For those of the readers who still hold up their sleeves the "trump card" - "imprints and carbonized remains" of vegetation in hard and brown coal - I will only ask you to be patient a little more. Seemingly "unkilled" this trump card we will kill a little later ...

Let's return to the already mentioned monograph "Unknown Hydrogen" by S. Digonsky and V. Ten. The previous quote, in its entirety, actually reads as follows:

“Given the recognized role of deep gases, and also based on the material presented in Chapter 1, the genetic relationship of natural carbonaceous substances with juvenile hydrogen-methane fluid can be described as follows.1. From the gas-phase system С-О-Н (methane, hydrogen, carbon dioxide), solid and liquid carbonaceous substances can be synthesized both in artificial conditions and in nature.2. Natural diamond is formed by instantaneous heating of natural gaseous carbon compounds.3. Pyrolysis of methane diluted with hydrogen under artificial conditions leads to the synthesis of pyrolytic graphite, and in nature to the formation of graphite and, most likely, all varieties of coal.4. Pyrolysis of pure methane under artificial conditions leads to the synthesis of soot, and in nature - to the formation of shungite.5. Pyrolysis of methane diluted with carbon dioxide under artificial conditions leads to the synthesis of liquid and solid hydrocarbons, and in nature to the formation of the entire genetic series of bituminous substances.”

The cited Chapter 1 of this monograph is titled "Polymorphism of solids" and is largely devoted to the crystallographic structure of graphite and its formation during the stepwise transformation of methane under the influence of heat into graphite, which is usually represented only as a general equation:

CH4 → Sgraphite + 2H2

But this general form of the equation hides the most important details of the process that actually takes place.

“... in accordance with the rule of Gay-Lusac and Ostwald, according to which, in any chemical process, not the most stable final state of the system initially occurs, but the least stable state, which is closest in energy value to the initial state of the system, i.e., if between the initial and the final states of the system, there are a number of intermediate relatively stable states, they will successively replace each other in the order of a stepwise change in energy. This “rule of stepwise transitions”, or “the law of successive reactions”, also corresponds to the principles of thermodynamics, since in this case there is a monotonous change in energy from the initial to the final state, taking successively all possible intermediate values ​​”(S. Digonsky, V. Ten,“ unknown hydrogen).

When applied to the process of graphite formation from methane, this means that methane not only loses hydrogen atoms during pyrolysis, passing successively through the stages of "residues" with different amounts of hydrogen - these "residues" also participate in reactions, interacting with each other as well. This leads to the fact that the crystallographic structure of graphite is, in fact, interconnected not at all atoms of “pure” carbon (located, as we are taught at school, at the nodes of a square grid), but hexagons of benzene rings! .. It turns out, that graphite is a complex hydrocarbon in which there is simply little hydrogen left! ..

On fig. 10, which shows a photograph of crystalline graphite with a 300-fold increase, this is clearly visible: the crystals have a pronounced hexagonal (i.e., hexagonal) shape, and not at all square.

Crystallographic model of graphite structure

Micrograph of a single crystal of natural graphite. SW. 300.

(from the monograph "Unknown Hydrogen")

Actually, from all the mentioned Chapter 1, only one idea is important to us here. The idea that in the process of decomposition of methane, the formation of complex hydrocarbons occurs in a completely natural way! It happens because it turns out to be energetically favorable!

And not only gaseous or liquid hydrocarbons, but also solid ones!

And what is also very important: we are not talking about some purely theoretical research, but about the results of empirical research. Research, some areas of which, in fact, have long been put on stream (see Fig. 11)!..

(from the monograph "Unknown Hydrogen")

Well, now it's time to deal with the "trump card" of the version of the organic origin of brown and black coal - the presence of "carbonized plant residues" in them.

Such "carbonized plant residues" are found in coal deposits in huge quantities. Paleobotanists "confidently identify plant species" in these "remains".

It was on the basis of the abundance of these "remnants" that the conclusion was made about almost tropical conditions in the vast regions of our planet and the conclusion about the violent flowering of the plant world in the Carboniferous period.

Moreover, as stated above, even the “age” of coal deposits is “determined” by the types of vegetation that are “imprinted” and “preserved” as “remains” in this coal ...

Indeed, at first glance, such a trump card seems unkillable.

But this is only at first glance. In fact, the "unkilled trump card" is killed quite easily. What I will do now. I will do it “by someone else's hands”, referring all to the same monograph “Unknown Hydrogen” ...

“In 1973, an article by the great biologist A.A. Lyubishchev "Frost patterns on glass" ["Knowledge is power", 1973, No. 7, p.23-26]. In this article, he drew attention to the striking external similarity of ice patterns with a variety of plant structures. Considering that there are general laws governing the formation of forms in wildlife and inorganic matter, A.A. Lyubishchev noted that one of the botanists mistook a photograph of an ice pattern on glass for a photograph of a thistle.

From the point of view of chemistry, frosty patterns on glass are the result of gas-phase crystallization of water vapor on a cold substrate. Naturally, water is not the only substance capable of forming similar patterns during crystallization from a gas phase, solution or melt. At the same time, no one tries - even with extreme similarity - to establish a genetic relationship between inorganic dendritic formations and plants. However, completely different reasoning can be heard if plant patterns or forms acquire carbonaceous substances crystallizing from the gas phase, as shown in Fig. 12, borrowed from the work [V.I. Berezkin, "On the soot model of the origin of Karelian schungites", Geology and Physics, 2005. v.46, No. 10, p.1093-1101].

When pyrolytic graphite was obtained by pyrolysis of methane diluted with hydrogen, it was found that, away from the gas flow, in stagnant zones, dendritic forms are formed that are very similar to “vegetable remains”, clearly indicating the vegetable origin of fossil coals” (S. Digonsky, V. Ten, "Unknown Hydrogen").

Electron microscopic images of carbon fibers

in geometry to the light.

a – observed in shungite substance,

b - synthesized during the catalytic decomposition of light hydrocarbons

Next, I will give some photographs of formations that are not prints in coal at all, but a “by-product” during the pyrolysis of methane under different conditions. These are photographs both from the monograph "Unknown Hydrogen" and from the personal archive of S.V. Digonsky. who kindly gave them to me.

I will give almost no comments, which, in my opinion, will simply be superfluous ...

(from the monograph "Unknown Hydrogen")

(from the monograph "Unknown Hydrogen")

Trump card beat...

The “reliably scientifically established” version of the organic origin of coal and other fossil hydrocarbons did not have any serious real support left ...

And what in return?..

And in return - a rather elegant version of the abiogenic origin of all carbonaceous minerals (with the exception of peat).

1. Hydride compounds in the bowels of our planet decompose when heated, releasing hydrogen, which, in full accordance with the law of Archimedes, rushes up - to the surface of the Earth.

2. On its way, due to its high chemical activity, hydrogen interacts with the substance of the interior, forming various compounds. Including such gaseous substances as methane CH4, hydrogen sulfide H2S, ammonia NH3, water vapor H2O and the like.

3. Under conditions of high temperatures and in the presence of other gases that are part of the fluids of the subsoil, there is a step-by-step decomposition of methane, which, in full accordance with the laws of physical chemistry, leads to the formation of gaseous hydrocarbons, including complex ones.

4. Rising both along the existing cracks and faults in the earth's crust, and forming new ones under pressure, these hydrocarbons fill all the cavities available to them in geological rocks (see Fig. 22). And due to contact with these colder rocks, gaseous hydrocarbons pass into a different phase state and (depending on the composition and environmental conditions) form deposits of liquid and solid minerals - oil, brown and coal, anthracite, graphite and even diamonds.

5. In the process of formation of solid deposits, in accordance with the still far unexplored laws of self-organization of matter, under appropriate conditions, the formation of ordered forms occurs, including those reminiscent of the forms of the living world.

All! The scheme is extremely simple and concise! Exactly as much as a brilliant idea requires ...

Schematic section illustrating common localization conditions

and the shape of graphite veins in pegmatites

(from the monograph "Unknown Hydrogen")

This simple version removes all the contradictions and inconsistencies mentioned above. And oddities in the location of oil fields; and inexplicable replenishment of oil tanks; and crowded fold groups with Z-junctions in coal seams; and the presence of large amounts of sulfur in coals of different breeds; and contradictions in the dating of deposits, and so on and so forth ...

And all this - without the need to resort to such exotic things as "planktonic algae", "spore deposits" and "multiple transgressions and regressions of the sea" in vast areas...

Earlier, only some of the consequences that the version of the abiogenic origin of carbon minerals entails were actually mentioned in passing. Now we can analyze in more detail what all of the above leads to.

The simplest conclusion that follows from the above photographs of "carbonized plant forms", which in fact are only forms of pyrolytic graphite, will be this: paleobotanists now need to think hard! ..

It is clear that all their conclusions, "discoveries of new species" and systematization of the so-called "vegetation of the Carboniferous period", which are made on the basis of "imprints" and "remains" in coal, should simply be thrown into the wastebasket. No, and there were no such species! ..

Of course, there are still imprints in other rocks - for example, in limestone or shale deposits. Here the basket may not be needed. But you have to think!

However, it is worth considering not only paleobotanists, but also paleontologists. The fact is that in the experiments not only “plant” forms were obtained, but also those that belong to the animal world! ..

As S.V. Digonsky put it in a personal correspondence with me: “Gas-phase crystallization generally works wonders - both fingers and ears came across” ...

Paleoclimatologists also need to think hard. After all, if there was no such violent development of vegetation, which was required only to explain the powerful deposits of coal in the framework of the organic version of its origin, then a natural question arises: was there a tropical climate in the so-called "Carboniferous period"? ..

And it was not for nothing that at the beginning of the article I gave a description of the conditions not only in the "Carboniferous period", as they are now presented within the framework of the "generally accepted" picture, but also captured the segments before and after. There is a very curious detail: before the "Carboniferous period" - at the end of Devon - the climate is rather cool and arid, and after - at the beginning of Perm - the climate is also cool and arid. Before the "Carboniferous period" we have a "red continent", and after we have the same "red continent" ...

The following logical question arises: was there a warm "Carboniferous period" at all ?!.

Remove it - and the edges will sew together wonderfully! ..

And by the way, a relatively cool climate, which will eventually turn out for the entire segment from the beginning of Devon right up to the end of Perm, will perfectly fit with a minimum of heat from the bowels of the Earth before the start of its active expansion.

ut, of course, geologists will have to think.

Remove from the analysis all coal, for the formation of which previously required a significant period of time (until all the “original peat” accumulates) - what will remain?!

Will there be other deposits? .. I agree. But…

It is customary to divide geological periods in accordance with some global differences from neighboring periods. What is it?..

There was no tropical climate. There was no global peat formation. There were no multiple vertical movements either - what was the bottom of the sea, accumulating limestone deposits, remained this bottom of the sea! On the contrary: the process of condensation of hydrocarbons into a solid phase had to take place in a closed space!.. Otherwise, they would simply dissipate into the air and cover large areas without forming such dense deposits.

Incidentally, such an abiogenic scheme for the formation of coal indicates that the process of this formation began much later, when layers of limestone (and other rocks) had already formed. Furthermore. There is no single period of formation of coal at all. Hydrocarbons continue to come from the depths to this day!..

True, if there is no end to the process, then there may be its beginning ...

But if we associate the flow of hydrocarbons from the bowels precisely with the hydride structure of the planet's core, then the time of formation of the main carboniferous seams should be attributed to a hundred million years later (according to the existing geological scale)! By the time when the active expansion of the planet began - that is, to the turn of Perm and Triassic. And then the Triassic should already be correlated with coal (as a characteristic geological object), and not at all some kind of "Carboniferous period", which ended with the beginning of the Permian period.

And then the question arises: what are the grounds for distinguishing the so-called "Carboniferous period" in a separate geological period? ..

From what can be gleaned from the popular literature on geology, I come to the conclusion that there are simply no grounds for such a distinction! ..

And consequently, the conclusion is drawn: there was simply no “Carboniferous period” in the history of the Earth! ..

I don't know what to do with a good hundred million years.

Whether to cross them out altogether, or distribute them somehow between Devon and Perm…

Don't know…

Let the experts break their heads over this in the end! ..

Once upon a time, the waters of the World Ocean covered the entire planet, and the land appeared on its surface as separate islands. Scientists indicate these islands with great accuracy. In what way? Through coal seams scattered all over the globe, even in polar countries. Each locality where coal is found was then an island, around which the waves of the oceans boiled. By the length of the deposits of coal, you can find out the approximate size of the forests that covered the islands. And by the thickness of the coal seams, they find out how long they have been growing here. Millions of years ago, these island forests captured vast reserves of solar energy and buried them with them in the stone graves of the Earth.

They did a great job, these primeval forests. The reserves of coal on the globe are estimated at trillions of tons. It is believed that with the extraction of two billion tons per year, mankind is provided with fossil coals for millennia! And Russia occupies the first place in the world in terms of coal reserves.

Natural engravings, imprinted by nature itself, depicting the vegetation of forests of past periods, have been preserved in the earth. On pieces of coal, slate, brown coal, strikingly clear imprints of plants, their contemporaries, often come across.

Sometimes nature preserved parts of plants in amber; it also contained inclusions of animal origin. Amber was highly valued in the ancient world as an ornament. Caravans of ships equipped for him to the shores of the foggy Baltic. But what is amber itself? The Roman writer and naturalist Pliny conveys a touching Greek legend about his origin: these are the frozen tears of the girls, the daughters of Apollo, who inconsolably mourned the death of their brother Phaethon...

The origin of amber was not known even in the Middle Ages, although the demand for it greatly increased. He went to make rich monastic rosaries.

The secret of amber was revealed by M. V. Lomonosov: "Amber is a product of the plant kingdom." This is the hardened resin of coniferous trees that once grew in the places where amber is now mined.

In the mountain strata, using a microscope, they discovered the remains of pollen, spores of ancient plants.

Finds from different layers are compared with each other and with modern plants and thus study the flora of distant times. “Many underground secrets are revealed in this way by nature,” - this is how one can say about this in the words of M.V. Lomonosov.

Most often they are not at all like our plants, sometimes they resemble them to some extent, and yet they differ sharply. That was a different plant world, and only sometimes, mainly in tropical countries, plants are found - a living reminder of ancient times.

Based on the prints, it is possible to restore forest landscapes of the Carboniferous period and later. “We can even recreate these landscapes with such completeness,” writes German researcher Karl Müller in his book “The World of Plants. The experience of space botany, "as if nature had given us a collection of all the plants of that time."

... The forests of the Carboniferous period rose directly from the water; they occupied the low-lying shores and marshy plains in the interior of the islands. Nothing like the modern forests of any earthly latitudes with their life forms and colors.

In the middle of the Carboniferous period, giant forms of club mosses developed - lepidodendrons and sigillaria, whose powerful trunks, up to two meters in diameter, reached 20-30 meters in height. They have narrow, bristle-like leaves scattered along the trunk. Somewhat lower were giant horsetails - calamites.

Lepidodendrons and sigillaria settled on the silty shores, where other plants suffocated without such branched roots with vertical outgrowths for breathing.

There were also real ferns with wide pinnate plates - fronds. But their position was much more modest than that of club mosses and horsetails. They did not give such gigantic forms, but they surpassed clubmosses and horsetails in diversity: from tree-like to delicate grassy ones. Their thin, dark-brown trunks, with thickenings and scars from fallen leaves, overgrown with green mosses, raised bunches of huge, beautifully dissected leaves, like magnificent fans, to the then eternally gloomy sky. Climbing species of ferns twined around the trunks of tree species and mixed below with a grassy cover of ferns.

Above the gentle arch of the green canopy stretched a dark sky with heavy clouds. Frequent showers, thunderstorms, evaporation, warm and even temperatures created conditions exceptionally favorable for the development of ferns. Luxurious bushy forms grew under the tree ferns. The soil, where mosses and algae rotted, was covered with herbaceous ferns. But these forests presented a monotonous and dull picture: only about 800 species of plants have been discovered so far, including more than 200 species of ferns.

Traces of real trees - cordaites, the ancestors of gymnosperms - are not uncommon in prints on coal. These are tall trees with long, belt-like leaves collected in dense tufts. Cordaites grew on the fringes of swamps, preferring them to mud marshes.

In the southeast of North America, on the Mississippi River, on the peat bogs flooded by its waters, rose forests of marsh cypress. Trees felled by a storm or rotted over time fell to the ground and, together with ferns and mosses, slowly decomposed with little access to air.

The forests were silent. Only occasionally does a huge, clumsy amphibian rustle among the ferns. It crawls slowly under the foliage, hiding from daylight. Yes, somewhere in the sky a rare insect will fly by - a novelty of that period, with wings up to 70 centimeters in span. No birds singing, no grasshoppers chirping.

Before the advent of ferns and mosses, there were no fertile soils on Earth. There were clays, sands, but they were not yet soil in our modern sense, because they did not contain humus. In the coal forests begins the accumulation of plant residues and the formation of a dark layer - humus. Together with clays and sands, it gave rise to fertile soils.

In the deposits of brown coal come across whole trees, with bark, leaves. A piece of fossil coal under a microscope told about the anatomical structure of these plants. It turned out to be the same as that of modern conifers. Consequently, brown coal was formed later, when conifers occupied a dominant position on Earth, pushing aside ferns. This could happen with the increase in land mass and climate change towards greater dryness: from insular to continental.

Above the layers of coal in our largest coal basins - the Kuznetsk, Donetsk, Moscow region and others - the lights of big cities sparkle, the laughter of children and the songs of youth are heard, trains run, airplanes fly. There is an inexhaustible search for a better life by man ... And once there were swampy shores of small sea bays, covered with vegetation of the humid tropics. This was learned from a microscopic cut of petrified wood, made in the form of a thin section. Petrified trunks from the Donets Basin turned out to be devoid of growth rings, typical of northern trees.

Such rings are formed in the wood of modern trees of temperate latitudes because they grow vigorously in spring and summer, but stop growing in winter. And on a cross section, one can immediately distinguish wide summer layers of wood from narrow winter ones. The wood of many tropical plants does not have growth rings. This means that in those distant times on the territory of the modern Donets Basin, the weather was even, warm and humid throughout the year, as in humid equatorial forests.

In the northern regions of the USSR, in the ancient stone layers of the earth, the remains of laurels, magnolias, cypresses, that is, the Mediterranean flora, are found. In Svalbard, where only small herbs and shrubs currently grow, the remains of plane trees and walnuts are found.

Lush palm trees once grew in the lower reaches of the Volga. On the shores of the modern Baltic Sea, Mediterranean vegetation flourished. Tree ferns, laurels, the famous mammoth trees, palm trees - everything that we now see in botanical gardens grew under our sky.

Even more surprising is Greenland. Magnolia, oaks, grapes were found in the ground under solid ice. In India, on the contrary, the flora of the Carboniferous period was characterized by low stature, coarse, dense leaves, and the development of shrubs and grasses. And this is proof of a colder and drier climate.

“In the northern regions in ancient times there were great heat waves,” wrote M.V. Lomonosov, “where elephants could be born and breed, as well as ordinary plants near the equator could stay.”

What explanation does science give for these amazing facts? Once all the continents made up a single continent, which then split into parts, moving apart in different directions. The movement of the continents caused a displacement of the earth's axis. Along with it, the points of the North and Skin Poles lying on it changed their position, and consequently, the equator.

If we agree with this theory, then in the Carboniferous period the equator did not pass where it passes now, but to the north: through Central Europe and the Caspian Sea. And the entire Donets Basin was in a zone of humid equatorial forests, which is confirmed by its fossil vegetation. The subtropics went far to the north, while the point of the North Pole then lay somewhere near the eastern coast of America. On the continents of the Southern Hemisphere - Australia, Africa, South America, then not yet divided, the climate was cold. This explains the absence of tropical vegetation in the Carboniferous terrestrial strata on the continents of the Southern Hemisphere.

It is believed that coal forests grew more than two hundred million years ago and that in the next, Permian period, the dominance of ferns ended. Carboniferous forests perished for various reasons. In some places, the sea flooded the forests on the sunken parts of the earth's surface. Sometimes they died, captured by swamps.

In many cases, climate change has caused their death. The sun in their heyday never burned with its rays: they were softened by heavy clouds that hung low over the forest. Now the sky was cloudless and the sun was sending burning rays to the plants. For ferns, these conditions were unbearable, and they become noticeably smaller, hiding only in the shade of more hardy gymnosperms.

With their death, the Middle Ages began for the forests of the Earth, leaving their traces in the stone book of our planet.

The climate on Earth, in connection with the processes of mountain building, became more diverse. Mountain ranges stood as a wall in the path of moist sea winds and fenced off the interior spaces of the continents, turning them into deserts.

On the territory of the European part of the USSR, a majestic mountain range - the Urals - rose from the bottom of the then Ural Sea. Now we know it decrepit, dilapidated, and in the days of its youth the Urals were mighty, and eternal snows crowned its peaks. In place of the Donetsk Sea, a mountain range appeared - Donetsk, completely smoothed out by time.

Central Europe gradually moved from the equatorial zone to the zone of subtropical steppes and deserts, and then to temperate. In a drier and colder climate, people from the cold countries of the Southern Hemisphere, where there has been a warming, felt great.

In the dry and sultry climate of the early Middle Ages, the most ancient coniferous araucaria and interesting gymnosperms, ginkgo, developed. In appearance, this plant seems to be an ordinary broad-leaved tree. But his "leaf" is a wide bipartite needle in the form of a fan with a forked arrangement of veins. There were no more lepidodendrons, no sigillaria, no cordaites; only seed ferns survived.

The climate has changed once again: it has become wetter and milder. Along the shores of the tropical seas that covered the southern regions of the USSR and washed the Far East and Turkestan, forests of gymnosperms grew luxuriantly, especially the so-called cycads and bennetites. But they did not last long as masters of the situation, and now only fossil finds testify to them. In Mexico, they found a layer with a thickness of 600 meters; at one time it was a whole forest of Bennetites. We found their remains in the vicinity of Vladivostok and in Turkestan.

Petrified coniferous trees Darwin met in the Cordillera at an altitude of more than 2000 meters; eleven of them stood in the form of trees, although petrified, and thirty or forty others had already turned into white calcareous spar, and their stumps stuck out above the ground. Once they stretched their branches over the very ocean, which at that time approached the foot of the Cordillera. They were raised by volcanic soil that rose above sea level. Then the area became again the seabed and the waves rolled over the tops of the flooded trees. The sea dragged sand, gravel, pebbles on them, lavas from underwater volcanoes lay on top. Hundreds of millennia have passed… The seabed has risen again and exposed. Valleys and ravines cut it. An ancient grave was opened, and the monuments of the past hidden in it appeared on the surface of the earth. The soil that once nourished them, and they themselves turned to stone.

Many conifers have survived to this day, enduring violent upheavals of mountain building, climate change and, most importantly, holding on even with the advent of the most perfect flora - angiosperms.

In just half a million years, this group of plants captured the entire globe from the poles to the equator, settled everywhere and gave the highest number of species in the entire long history of plants on Earth.

From a geological point of view, half a million years is a short time. The victory of angiosperms, compared with the entire history of vegetation for hundreds of millions of years, and perhaps more than a billion, is like a flood that suddenly swept over our entire planet. Like an explosion of new plant species!

But what ensured such an angiosperm victory? Many reasons: amazing flexibility in adapting to different living conditions, different climates, soils, temperatures. The appearance and development simultaneously with angiosperms of pollinating insects: butterflies, flies, bumblebees, bees, beetles. The birth of a perfect flower with a green calyx and a bright corolla, with a delicate aroma, with protected ovaries.

But the main thing is different. The fact that angiosperms on land better than all other green plants fulfill their cosmic role in nature. Their crown, branches, leaves are widely spread in the air and receive solar energy and carbon dioxide on several floors. No other group of plants had such opportunities.

Green algae in the oceans, which for the first time caught the sun's ray with the help of chlorophyll grains, multicellular algae, mosses and lichens, ferns, gymnosperms, angiosperms - all the links of the great green chain on Earth eternally serve the same goal: to catch the sun's ray. But angiosperms improved in this direction better than other plants.

Only a few pages from the annals have been turned over by us, but even they are vivid witnesses of the panorama of forests on our planet, forever moving in space and time.

Carboniferous period, abbreviated carbon(C) - geological period in the Upper Paleozoic and the fifth from the bottom system of the Paleozoic erathema, corresponding to the fifth period of the Paleozoic era of the geological history of the Earth. The beginning is 360 million years ago, the end is 286 million years ago, the duration of the Carboniferous is 74 million years. Named because of the large-scale processes of coal formation at this time.

For the first time, the outlines of the greatest supercontinent in the history of the Earth - Pangaea - appear. Pangea was formed by the collision of Laurasia (North America and Europe) with the ancient southern supercontinent Gondwana. Shortly before the collision, Gondwana rotated clockwise, so that its eastern part (India, Australia, Antarctica) moved to the south, and the western part (South America and Africa) ended up in the north. As a result of the turn, a new ocean, the Tethys, appeared in the east, and the old one, the Rhea ocean, closed in the west. At the same time, the ocean between the Baltic and Siberia was getting smaller; soon these continents also collided.

Tectonics and magmatism

The main structural elements of the earth's crust during the Carboniferous period experienced significant rearrangements caused by the manifestation of Hercynian folding. Their result was the transformation of a significant part of | geosynclinal regions into folded mountain structures - hercynides. The first phase of the Hercynian tectogenesis, which manifested itself at the turn of the Devonian and Carboniferous, caused the growth of geoanticlinal uplifts in geosynclinal areas. Uplifts soon gave way over vast areas to subsidence of the earth's crust and the development of marine transgressions, which reached a maximum in the Visean. The manifestation of Hercynian folding was more intense at the end of the Early Carboniferous epoch. These movements took place in a number of geosynclinal regions, within which the folded structures of the Hercynides arose. Folding was especially intense in the West European geosynclinal region and the Ural-Mongolian geosynclinal belt. The folded structures that appeared here in the Middle Carboniferous entered the orogenic stage of development. Along with the formation of intermountain depressions, marginal or foothill troughs were formed at the border of uplifted mountain structures and platforms. Thick clastic strata accumulated in depressions and troughs, with which the largest coal basins and deposits are associated. In the platform areas, the tectonic movements of the end of the Early - the beginning of the Middle Carboniferous were manifested by uplifts that caused regressions of the sea. In the Middle Carboniferous, new transgressions arose in places. At the turn of the Middle and Late Carboniferous ages, a new phase of Hercynian folding occurred, which complicated the previously formed Hercynides. In the Late Carboniferous, the movements of the earth's crust became more and more differentiated. Along with the predominance of regressions, there were limited transgressions. In the Late Carboniferous, folding movements continued in geosynclines. Throughout the Carboniferous period, magmatism manifested itself in geosynclinal belts. It is believed that in the Carboniferous, the platforms of the Southern Hemisphere and the equatorial region formed a single giant supercontinent - Gondwana. In the Northern Hemisphere, the existence of a hypothetical continent of Angaria, located on the site of modern North Asia, is allowed. The geological development of the earth's crust in the Carboniferous predetermined on a planetary scale the predominance of marine deposits in the Lower Carboniferous and the widespread development of continental facies in the middle and upper sections.

Flora and fauna

In the Carboniferous period, ground woody vegetation rapidly develops, which subsequently contributed to intensive coal formation. Some groups of higher spore plants that appeared as early as the Devonian reached their maximum flourishing: sigillaria, lepidodendron (lycopods), calamites (horsetails), stauropteris, various zhovnikovye (fern-like), seed horsetails, cordaites (gymnosperms). The emerging seed plants could settle in drier habitats, since the features of their reproduction are not related to the presence of water. Lycopsformes (in particular, lepidodendrons), arthropods (calamites, etc.) and ferns dominated. Characterized by a wide distribution of forest formations. In connection with the intensification of climate differentiation during the Carboniferous period and the isolation of climatic zones, three floristic regions are clearly distinguished in the Middle and Late Carboniferous: tropical - Euramerian, northern temperate climate - Angara and southern temperate zone - Gondwanal.

Minerals

During the Carboniferous period, deposits of various minerals were formed, the most important of which are coals. Carboniferous coal deposits account for about 25% of the world's total fossil coal reserves. Coal basins and carbon deposits are widely represented in Europe and North America, where more than 80% of the total geological reserves of coals of this age are concentrated. The main coal basins in the European part of Russia are Podmoskovny, in Ukraine - Donetsk and Lvov-Volyn. Of the coal basins of the Carboniferous period in the Asian part of Russia, the most important are Kuznetsk and Tunguska, in Kazakhstan - Karaganda and Ekibastuz. Numerous coal basins, predominantly of Middle and Late Carboniferous age, are known in foreign Europe and Asia, North America and on the southern continents. The largest basins in Europe are associated with carbon deposits: South Wales, Lancashire, Northumberland, Kent in Great Britain, Asturian in Spain, Valenciennes in France, Liege and Campin in Belgium, Lower Rhine-Westphalian (Ruhr) in Germany, Upper Silesian in Poland, Ostrava in Czech Republic. The coal content of the coal system in Asia is less developed than in Europe. The main coal basins are known in northeast China, in Turkey (Zonguldak), Mongolia, Indonesia, etc. In North America, the largest coal accumulation is associated with the Pennsylvanian strata (Appalachian, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas basins). Of the fossil fuels, in addition to coal, the coal system contains deposits of oil and natural gas. In Russia, the commercial oil and gas potential of the Carboniferous is typical for the east of the East European Platform (Volga-Ural oil and gas province), where oil and gas deposits are present in the lower and middle sections. Oil and gas deposits are also found in the Dnieper-Donetsk depression. Here, oil and gas deposits are confined to the Visean, Serpukhovian and Bashkirian deposits, and the main gas reserves lie in the upper Carboniferous. Large oil and gas fields of the Mississippian (Early Carboniferous) age are known in the central and eastern states of the USA (Midcontinent). Numerous deposits of various ores of sedimentary and magmatic origin are subordinated to deposits of the Carboniferous system. From sedimentary ores - brown iron ore (East European platform, Ural), bauxite (Podmoskovny basin, Central Asia). Deposits of refractory clays are connected in places with deposits of the Carboniferous system; with intrusions - the largest (now mostly depleted) deposits of iron ore in the Urals and less rich in the Sayano-Altai and other folded regions, as well as deposits of polymetal ores. Carboniferous limestones are widely used as cement raw materials, building and facing stone, etc.

Tsimbal Vladimir Anatolyevich is a lover and collector of plants. For many years he has been engaged in the morphology, physiology and history of plants, and has been conducting educational work.

In his book, the author invites us into the amazing and sometimes mysterious world of plants. Accessible and simple, even for an unprepared reader, the book tells about the structure of plants, the laws of their life, the history of the plant world. In a fascinating, almost detective form, the author talks about many mysteries and hypotheses related to the study of plants, their origin and development.

The book contains a large number of drawings and photographs by the author and is intended for a wide range of readers.

All drawings and photographs in the book belong to the author.

The publication was prepared with the support of the Dmitry Zimin Dynasty Foundation.

The Dynasty Foundation for Non-Commercial Programs was founded in 2001 by Dmitry Borisovich Zimin, Honorary President of VimpelCom. The priority areas of the Foundation's activities are support for fundamental science and education in Russia, popularization of science and education.

“Library of the Dynasty Foundation” is a project of the Foundation for the publication of modern popular science books selected by expert scientists. The book you are holding in your hands was published under the auspices of this project.

For more information about the Dynasty Foundation, please visit www.dynastyfdn.ru.

On the cover - Ginkgo biloba (Ginkgo biloba) against the background of the imprint of a leaf of the probable ancestor of Ginkgo - Psygmophyllum expansum.

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The next period in the history of the Earth is the Carboniferous or, as it is often called, Carboniferous. One should not think that, for some magical reason, the change in the name of the period entails changes in the plant and animal world. No, the plant worlds of the Early Carboniferous and Late Devonian are not much different. Even in the Devonian, higher plants of all divisions, except for angiosperms, appeared. The Carboniferous period accounts for their further development and flourishing.

One of the important events that took place in the Carboniferous period was the emergence of different plant communities in different geographical areas. What does this mean?

At the beginning of the Carboniferous, it is difficult to find the difference between the plants of Europe, America, Asia. Unless there are some minor differences between the plants of the northern and southern hemispheres. But by the middle of the period, several areas with their own set of genera and species are clearly distinguished. Unfortunately, it is still very widely believed that the Carboniferous is a time of a universally warm, humid climate, when the entire Earth was covered with forests of huge, up to 30 m high, lycopsform - lepidodendrons and sigillaria, and huge tree-like "horsetails" - calamites and ferns. All this luxurious vegetation grew in swamps, where, after death, it formed deposits of coal. Well, to complete the picture, we must add giant dragonflies - meganevr and two-meter herbivorous centipedes.

It wasn't quite right. More precisely, it was not so everywhere. The fact is that in the Carboniferous, as now, the Earth was just as spherical and also rotated around its axis and revolved around the Sun. This means that even then on the Earth a zone of hot tropical climate passed along the equator, and it was cooler closer to the poles. Moreover, in the deposits of the end of the Carboniferous in the southern hemisphere, undoubted traces of very powerful glaciers were found. Why, even in textbooks, are we still told about the “warm and humid swamp”?

Such an idea of ​​the Carboniferous period was formed back in the 19th century, when paleontologists and, in particular, paleobotanists, only fossils from Europe were known. And Europe, like America, was in the tropics in the Carboniferous period. But to judge the flora and fauna only by one tropical zone, to put it mildly, is not entirely correct. Imagine that some paleobotanist after many millions of years, having unearthed the remains of the current tundra vegetation, will make a report on the topic "The flora of the Earth in the Quaternary period." According to his report, it turns out that you and I, dear reader, live in extremely harsh conditions. That the whole Earth is covered with an extremely poor flora, consisting mainly of lichens and mosses. Only in some places unfortunate people can stumble upon a dwarf birch and rare blueberry bushes. After describing such a bleak picture, our distant descendant will certainly conclude that a very cold climate prevailed everywhere on Earth, and will decide that the reason for this is the low content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, low volcanic activity, or, in extreme cases, in some another meteorite that shifted the earth's axis.

Unfortunately, this is the usual approach to the climates and inhabitants of the distant past. Instead of trying to collect and study samples of fossil plants from different regions of the Earth, find out which of them grew at the same time, and analyze the data obtained, although, of course, this is difficult and requires a significant investment of effort and time, a person seeks to disseminate that knowledge , which he received by watching the growth of a room palm in the living room, for the entire history of plants.

But we still note that in the Carboniferous period, approximately at the end of the Early Carboniferous, scientists already distinguish at least three large areas with different vegetation. This region is tropical - Euramerian, northern extratropical - Angara region or Angarida and southern extratropical - Gondwana region or Gondwana. On the modern map of the world, Angarida is called Siberia, and Gondwana is the united Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia and the Hindustan peninsula. The Euramerian region is, as the name implies, Europe together with North America. The vegetation of these areas varied greatly. So, if spore plants dominated in the Euramerian region, then in Gondwana and Angara, starting from the middle of the Carboniferous, gymnosperms dominated. Moreover, the difference in the floras of these areas increased during the entire Carboniferous and at the beginning of the Permian.

Rice. 8. Cordaite. Possible ancestor of conifers. Carboniferous period.

What other important events took place in the plant kingdom of the Carboniferous period? It is necessary to note the appearance of the first conifers in the middle of the Carboniferous. When we talk about conifers, our familiar pines and spruces automatically come to mind. But coniferous carbons were a little different. These were, apparently, low, up to 10 meters, trees; in appearance, they slightly resembled modern araucaria. The structure of their cones was different. These ancient conifers grew, probably in relatively dry places, and descended from ... it is not yet known what ancestors. Again, the point of view accepted by almost all scientists on this issue is as follows: conifers descended from cordaites. Kordaites, which appeared, apparently, at the beginning of the Carboniferous period, and also descended from no one knows who, are very interesting and peculiar plants (Fig. 8). These were trees with leathery, lanceolate leaves collected in bunches at the ends of the shoots, sometimes very large, up to a meter long. The reproductive organs of cordaites were long thirty-centimeter shoots with male or female cones sitting on them. It should be noted that the cordaites were very different. There were also tall, slender trees, and there were inhabitants of shallow waters - plants with well-developed aerial roots, similar to modern inhabitants of mangroves. Among them were bushes.

In the Carboniferous, the first remains of cycads (or cycads) were also found - gymnosperms, few today, but very common in the Mesozoic era following the Paleozoic.

As you can see, the future "conquerors" of the Earth - conifers, cycads, some pteridosperms existed for a long time under the canopy of coal forests and accumulated strength for a decisive offensive.

Of course, you noticed the name "seed ferns". What are these plants? After all, if there are seeds, then the plant cannot be a fern. That's right, the name is perhaps not very successful. After all, we don't call amphibians "fish with legs." But this name very well shows the confusion experienced by scientists who discovered and studied these plants.

This name was proposed at the beginning of the 20th century by the outstanding English paleobotanists F. Oliver and D. Scott, who, studying the remains of plants of the Carboniferous period, which were considered ferns, found that seeds were attached to leaves similar to the leaves of modern ferns. These seeds sat at the ends of the feathers or directly on the rachis of the leaf, as in the leaves of the genus Alethopteris(photo 22). Then it turned out that most of the plants of the coal forests, which were previously taken for ferns, are seed plants. It was a good lesson. Firstly, this meant that in the past there lived plants completely different from modern ones, and secondly, scientists realized how deceptive external signs of similarity can be. Oliver and Scott gave this group of plants the name "pteridosperms", which means "seed ferns". The names of the genera with the ending - pteris(in translation - a feather), which, according to tradition, were given to the leaves of ferns, remained. So the leaves of the gymnosperms got "fern" names: Alethopteris, Glossopteris and many others.

Photo 22. Imprints of leaves of gymnosperms Alethopteris (Aletopteris) and Neuropteris (Neuropteris). Carboniferous period. Rostov region.

But worse was the fact that after the discovery of pteridosperms, all gymnosperms, not similar to modern ones, began to be attributed to seed ferns. Peltasperms, a group of plants with seeds attached to an umbrella-shaped disk - a peltoid (from the Greek "peltos" - shield) on its underside, and Caitoniums, in which the seeds were hidden in a closed capsule, and even glossopterids were also taken there. In general, if the plant was seed, but did not "climb" into any of the existing groups, then it was immediately ranked among the pteridosperms. As a result, almost all the huge variety of ancient gymnosperms turned out to be united under one name - pteridosperms. If we follow this approach, then, without a doubt, it is necessary to attribute both modern ginkgo and cycads to seed ferns. Now seed ferns are considered by most paleobotanists to be a team, a formal group. However, the class Pteridospermopsida exists even now. But we will agree to call pteridosperms only gymnosperms with single seeds attached directly to a pinnately dissected fern-like leaf.

There is another group of gymnosperms that appeared in the Carboniferous - glossopterids. These plants covered the vastness of Gondwana. Their remains were found in deposits of the Middle and Late Carboniferous, as well as the Permian on all southern continents, including India, which was then in the southern hemisphere. We will talk about these peculiar plants in more detail a little later, since the time of their heyday is the Permian period following the Carboniferous.

The leaves of these plants (photo 24) were similar, at first glance, to the leaves of the Euramerian cordaites, although in the Angara species they are usually smaller and differ in microstructural features. But the reproductive organs are fundamentally different. In Angara plants, the organs that carried the seeds are more reminiscent of coniferous cones, although of a very peculiar kind that is not found today. Previously, these plants, voinovsky, were classified as cordaites. Now they are distinguished in a separate order, and in the recent publication “The Great Turning Point in the History of the Plant World” S. V. Naugolnykh even places them in a separate class. Thus, in the department of gymnosperms, along with the already listed classes, such as conifers or cycads, another one appears - Voynovskaya. These peculiar plants appeared at the end of the Carboniferous, but grew widely throughout almost the entire territory of Angara in the Permian period.

Photo 23. Fossil seeds of Voinovskiaceae. Lower Perm. Urals.

Photo 24

What else needs to be said about the Carboniferous period? Well, perhaps, the fact that he got his name for the reason that the main reserves of coal in Europe were formed at that time. But in other places, in particular, in Gondwana and Angarida, deposits of coal were formed, for the most part, in the next, Permian period.

Generally speaking, the flora of the Carboniferous period was very rich, interesting and varied and certainly deserves a more detailed description. The landscapes of the Carboniferous period must have looked absolutely fantastic and unusual for us. Thanks to artists such as Z. Burian, who depicted the worlds of the past, we can now imagine the Carboniferous forests. But, knowing a little more about ancient plants and the climate of those times, we can imagine other, completely “alien” landscapes. For example, forests of small, two to three meters high, slender straight tree-like club mosses on a polar night, not far from the north pole of that time, in the current extreme northeast of our country.

Here is how S. V. Meyen describes this picture in his book “Traces of Indian Grass”: “A warm arctic night was coming. It was in this darkness that the thickets of lycopsids stood.

Strange landscape! It's hard to imagine it... Along the banks of rivers and lakes, a dull brush of sticks of various sizes stretches. Some collapsed. The water picks them up and carries them, knocks them down in heaps in the backwaters. In some places, the brush is interrupted by thickets of fern-like plants with rounded feather-leaves ... There probably hasn't been autumn leaf fall yet. Together with these plants, you will never meet either the bones of any quadruped, or the wing of an insect. It was quiet in the bushes."

But we still have a lot of interesting things ahead of us. Let's hasten further, to the last period of the Paleozoic era, or the era of ancient life, to Perm.

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The Carboniferous period is the period of the Earth, when forests of real trees turned green on it. Herbaceous plants and plants resembling bushes already existed on Earth. However, forty-meter giants with trunks up to two meters thick have appeared only now. They had powerful rhizomes, allowing the trees to hold firmly in soft, moisture-saturated soil. The ends of their branches were decorated with bunches of meter-long pinnate leaves, on the tips of which fruit buds grew, and then spores developed.
The emergence of forests became possible due to the fact that in the Carboniferous a new offensive of the sea began on land. The vast expanses of the continents in the Northern Hemisphere turned into marshy lowlands, and the climate remained hot as before. Under such conditions, vegetation developed unusually rapidly. The forest of the Carboniferous period looked rather gloomy. Stuffiness and eternal twilight reigned under the crowns of huge trees. The soil was a marshy bog, saturating the air with heavy vapors. In the thickets of calamites and sigillaria floundered clumsy creatures resembling salamanders in appearance, but many times their size - ancient amphibians.
Kordaites
Cordaites reproduced by seeds that matured in special organs - strobili, collected in earrings. These earrings were the prototype of real flowers, which appeared much later. The descendants of club mosses, lepidodendrons, had a ribbed trunk with a bark pierced by a network of air channels. The scars on the trunks were traces of fallen leaves and retained a diamond shape. And in sigillaria, covered with foliage resembling bristles, the scars on the trunks were hexagonal. The wood of these plants did not yet have annual rings, since there were no noticeable differences between seasons.

Kalamita
In the air, heavy with moisture, gigantic, with a wingspan of up to a meter, predatory dragonflies swept; huge spiders, similar to modern harvesters, hid in the dark, waiting for prey. Scorpions and cockroaches the size of a lap dog came across at every turn. Carboniferous insects had much in common with trilobites in their structure. But they did not originate from trilobites, but from terrestrial arthropods. Ferns reached an unprecedented flourishing of the Carboniferous period. They were found everywhere - both in forests and in meadows. These were Carboniferous plants of a wide variety of shapes and colors from light green to almost black. Many of them have become mighty trees with a thick trunk and dense feathery crown.
Neither earlier nor later on Earth was there such a variety of vegetation as the flora of the Carboniferous period had. But, like all living things, the plants of the Carboniferous period completed their development and died. Their remains fell into the shallow water of the lagoons, dragged on with silt, and various microorganisms began their unhurried work in these accumulations of organic substances. Plant residues were fermented, a large amount of gas was released, and organic matter was charred.
After millions of years, the plants of the carbon forests have turned into coal of various kinds. Where once there were thickets of horsetails, coal with a high sulfur content is now mined; algae and aquatic plants formed layers of coal with a high content of paraffin. Fat coals, coals with a long flame, coking coals - the grades of coal depend on the composition of the plants from which they were formed.
Over time, the coal seams were covered with layers of clay and shale, and many of them perfectly preserved the imprints of leaves, branches, seeds and other plant organs of the Carboniferous period. Coal deposits now resemble a grandiose layer cake, occupying entire regions of the land.

cycads
In the Permian period, cycads appeared - small trees with bunches of leaves on top. Their seeds were already ripening in cones similar to spruce and cedar.
Perm araucaria
The easiest to cope with the drought were araucaria, very similar to those that grow now near the coast of Australia, and ancient pines.
Fauna of the Carboniferous period. Carbon is characterized by the appearance of invertebrates. Among these, we note foraminifer and pulmonary gastropods. We also note the beginning of the life of vertebrates, in particular, this applies to reptiles. In parallel with this, some species became extinct, such as mollusks, graptolites and echinoderms.
Let's talk about such a large group as reptilomorphs. Only a few species preferred water, while all the rest lived on land. Many of these representatives already laid eggs, although until recently they spawned. Ready-made animals were born from the shell, which had only to reach the optimal size. If we take into account the Carboniferous period, then these animals were "kings". They differed in ears and nostrils. The largest individuals were ophiacodonts, their body length was 1.3 m. They somewhat resembled modern lizards in appearance.
Edaphosaurus were even larger. These are large herbivorous vertebrates. Some of them featured a folding sail that helped the animal control its temperature. The length of such animals reached 3.5 meters, and the mass was 300 kg.
No less interesting was the underwater fauna. 11% of all available genera were lobe-finned fishes. The most common were coelacanths and tetrapodomorphs. After some time, cartilaginous fish appeared, which just won the competition from carpal fish. Most of them belonged to the subclass of plastic gills. By the way, at that time there were quite a few sharks compared to other animals of the Carboniferous period. Although it is worth considering the fact that then they had a completely different structure. Therefore, they could not oust their neighbors.
Fortunately for people, today there is no longer a dental spiral that lived in the Carboniferous period. This underwater animal was characterized by a long outgrowth coming out of the lower jaw. Teeth grew over its entire area, which folded into a spiral. Paleontologists do not know what role this body part played. There is an assumption according to which this spiral was fired, and the prey was planted on the teeth. Although no one has come to a consensus, therefore the issue on this topic will always be discussed.

Also, one cannot leave aside the xenacanthids, which represented a detachment of sharks. Their sizes were quite small, the maximum length was 3 m. Most of all, the researchers managed to get information about the pleura. It is known that they lived in the fresh waters of America, Europe and Australia. Despite their relatively small size, they posed a threat to acanthodia. He dismembered fish with his sharp teeth. It was not difficult to catch an individual, since this species lived in a flock. Scientists believe that there was a membrane between the laid eggs. Its dimensions were very small, only 40 cm. But half of this length was occupied by the snout. Scientists themselves do not know what role this part of the body played in nature. Perhaps the animal was looking for food due to poor eyesight. These individuals were found both in salt and fresh waters.
The Carboniferous period brought changes to the life of insects. After all, it was in carbon that they began to fly. For comparison, we note that the bird first took to the air after 150 million years. Dragonflies of the Carboniferous period acquired a wonderful appearance. After some time, they became the kings of the air and often met near the swamps. In some individuals, the wingspan reached 90 cm. After that, butterflies, grasshoppers and moths took to the air.
It is interesting to learn how insects began to fly. You may have encountered very small and harmless insects in the damp parts of the kitchen. So they are called scales. If we examined these individuals under a microscope, we would notice tiny plates that look like flaps. Most likely, the dragonfly was able to straighten the plate in order to warm up in the morning. Well, later the insect used this part of the body to its full potential.
Amphibians of the Carboniferous period began their lives. In the process of evolution, they turned from lobe-finned fish. From that moment on, a new class appeared - reptiles. To date, the most common detachment of caudate. They have retained their original appearance.
Interesting changes have taken place in terms of relief. All land was collected in 2 continents: Gondwana and Laurasia. The Carboniferous period of the Paleozoic era is characterized by the constant convergence of these parts of the land surface of the Earth. After their collision, mountain ranges were formed. Let us also note the climate of the Carboniferous period, which became noticeably colder.