>I admit to some confusion myself now considering this whole coal question.
>To add more confusion to this it seems that the compression ratio may be
>difficult to determine as using "modern" trees as an example because they
>might not represent the pre-flood flora.
>
>I was under the impression that most coal was made up of the remains of
>lycopyte and sphenite material. This would be mosly extinct tree-form
>lycopods and hortails. Maybe my impressions are wrong. What is the
>consensus on how much dicot (flowering plant) wood there is in the coal
>record. My guess would be only the most recent coals (mostly soft brown
>coals if I remember my coal terminology) would contain any dicot wood. The
>point here is that in general lycopods and sphenites likely had very porous
>wood (much like todays tree ferns and palms) and thus the compression
>factor was very high, as opposed to dicot (flowering plant) wood which has
>a high density/specific gravity.
>On a similar note, the vast amount of fern-like fossilized material would
>seems to imply that the world was covered prodominantly with fern-like
>plants. Am I way off here in my impression of the fossil record?
You are not far wrong. Art, correct me if I err, but primitive plants were
quite different.
"Primitive vascular types consist of wood, a central pith and, in
addition, usually two thin layers of different cells which are
external to the wood." p. 22
See also my other reply to Art.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm