BEDS stands for Briefly Exposed Diluvial Sediments, in which local or regional falls of the waters of Noah’s Flood temporarily expose freshly laid sediments. This model has been used to explain dinosaur tracks, eggs, and scavenged bonebeds early in the Flood, as well as other geological challenges.1 It also provides one mechanism for the origin of coal.
Coal
Coal, which makes up less than 1% of all sedimentary rocks,2 is compressed and chemically altered plant matter that burns. It has played a significant part in human history as an energy source (fig. 1), especially since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Today, more of the world’s electricity is produced from burning coal than from any other single energy source.
Geologists define coal as:
A readily combustible rock containing more than 50% by weight and more than 70% by volume of carbonaceous material including inherent moisture, formed from compaction and induration of variously altered plant remains …3
Coal is ranked by the amount of energy per unit weight, from least to most: lignite → bituminous → anthracite. The differences are due to the maximum temperatures achieved after the burial of plant matter, resulting in increasing concentration of carbon.4
Individual coal seams can cover thousands of square kilometres, be up to 80 m (260 ft) thick, and be nearly pure carbon. Coal seams often have a flat bottom and top (fig. 2). The Appalachian coal basin, eastern United States, is approximately 180,000 km2 (70,000 mi2) in area. The Powder River Basin of northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana, USA, is believed to contain over 20 billion tonnes of recoverable coal, while the potential yield for Australia’s Latrobe Valley is some 70 billion tonnes.
Problems with the peat swamp theory
Secular scientists say that coal formed from compressed peat. Because of their strong belief in uniformitarianism (largely excluding catastrophe), they have little choice but to believe the peat or coal swamp theory. Peat is defined as: ‘An unconsolidated deposit of semi-carbonized plant remains in a water saturated environment, such as a bog’. Peat covers about 3% of the surface of the continents and is especially common in the Northern Hemisphere polar latitudes and in the tropics of Southeast Asia.
To form peat, the water in bogs must be acidic to protect the accumulating plant matter from oxidation and degradation by microorganisms. Otherwise, the plant remains will simply decay. The rate of accumulation of vegetation must also match exactly the rate at which the vast bog subsides—otherwise the peat will drown under water or dry out from being exposed to air. For thick coal seams, peat must accumulate to well over 100 m (330 ft) deep and for the thickest coal about 800 m (2,600 ft). Next, the peat must be buried by thousands of metres of sediments to compress and heat it. And last, for the coal to be found at the surface, these overlying sediments must be eroded away.
Although the ‘peat swamp theory’ has been popular for nearly 200 years, it has numerous problems compared with the alternative theory of transport and burial in a marine environment.5
First, marine fossils are often associated with coal, such as clams and various fish.
Second, sometimes coal seams split, and in between the two seams geologists find marine sediments, so the plant material was deposited at the same time as the marine sediments.6
Third, vertical tree trunks are known to pass through coal seams.7
Fourth, some trees have been reported upside down (fig. 3).6 This seems impossible in the swamp model.
Fifth, some species of trees found in coal grow only in well-drained soils, not swamps.3,8
Sixth, boulders are often found in coal beds all over the world.9 Boulders would not be transported by the quiet waters of a swamp, but could have been dropped from the roots of floating vegetation or be stuck in the roots of trees associated with the coal.
Coal contrary to uniformitarianism
Coal does not appear to be forming today, so its formation contradicts the uniformitarian doctrine ‘the present is the key to the past’. There are peat swamps today in Indonesia and Malaysia among other places,10,11 but the peat in these swamps is at most only about 15 m (50 ft) thick.12 The typical compression ratio of peat to coal is said to be about 10 to 1, which would mean that if the thickest peat known today were buried and compressed, it would yield a coal seam just 1.5 m thick. Most coal seams are much thicker.
Existing swamps are significantly smaller in extent than coal seams in the rock record. Just the Kentucky No. 12 coal seam occurs over an area of about 38,000 km2 (14,500 mi2).13 This is substantially greater than any modern peat swamp, and it alone is half the total area of all the peat swamps in Indonesia and Malaysia combined.
Origin of coal unknown
Thus, the origin of coal remains a geological mystery:14 “Unfortunately, scientists know very little about the processes involved in turning wood into coal …”.15 Coal geologist Larry Thomas writes:
It is a fact, however, that the origin of coal has been studied for over a century and that no one model has been identified that can predict the occurrence, development, and type of coal. A variety of models exist which attempt to identify the environment of deposition, but no single one can adequately give a satisfactory explanation for the cyclic nature of coal sequences, the lateral continuity of coal beds, and the physical and chemical characteristics of coals.16
Dinosaur tracks on coal seams
Another clue pointing to the origin of coal is the presence of dinosaur tracks at the top of some coal seams.17 They appear as upside-down sandstone casts in the ceilings of excavated coalmines, where sediment has filled the footprint depression. Tracks are found on top of the coal in Scotland and other parts of Europe;18 Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming in the United States;19 and southeast Queensland, Australia.20 DeCourten stated: “The overhead surface can be decorated with hundreds of footprints that hang precariously from the ceiling.”21 The footprints range up to nearly 1 m across (fig. 4), made by very large duck-billed dinosaurs, up to 17 m (56 ft) long, weighing around 18 tonnes.21 The tracks formed when the dinosaurs’ feet sank into the accumulated plant material. They are as much as 0.6 m deep, although most are much shallower. In fact, some of the largest tracks only penetrate 9 to 15 cm—suggesting that the precursor plant material was dense. Nadon notes:
Dinosaur tracks in the roofs of coal mines show a shallow depth of penetration and a preservation of foot morphology that is not possible unless the peat the animals walked upon was very firm.22
The top of accumulating peat today is not firm. Shallow dinosaur tracks, always on top of the coal, provide another strong argument against the peat swamp theory.
a) A beached log mat on a Briefly Exposed Diluvial Surface.
b) Dinosaurs walking on top of the log mat producing tracks in the compressed vegetation.
c) Rapid sea level rise showing sand spreading over the beached log mat.
Coal formed in the BEDS model
Dinosaur tracks point to the BEDS (Briefly Exposed Diluvial Sediments) mechanism. Judging from the amount of coal found in the world, the earth before the Flood supported about eight to ten times more plants and trees than today.23 The Flood uprooted the vegetation and formed vast floating log mats similar to those found on Spirit Lake, north of Mount St. Helens, Washington state, USA, after the 1980 volcanic eruption.24 But the Flood log mats would have been much thicker and much more extensive.
The log mats and associated plant debris would settle on the tops of BEDS, during a local to regional fall in the floodwaters (fig. 5a). Dinosaurs that had not yet drowned would swim to this island of brief safety, leaving tracks on the dense plant material (fig. 5b). A subsequent rise of sediment-laden floodwaters would then bury the footprints with the plant material before it could float away (fig. 5c). Cyclical rising and falling of water level during the Flood would have quickly deposited huge amounts of sediment that contained multiple layers of plant debris. The increased temperature and pressure due to the weight of the overlying sediment would have turned the plant debris into coal in months, as has been experimentally demonstrated,8 resulting in multiple coal seams.
The BEDS geological model, based on the global Flood recorded in the Bible, solves many long-standing geological puzzles, and helps us justify our confidence that the Bible is reliable.
References and Notes
Oard, M.J. (ebook), The Genesis Flood and Floating Log Mats: Solving geological riddles, Creation Book Publishers, Powder Springs, GA, 2014.
Nevins, S.E., The origin of coal, ICR Impact Series No. 41, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, 1976.
Neuendorf, K.K.E., Mehl, Jr., J.P. and Jackson, J.A., Glossary of Geology, Fifth Edition, American Geological Institute, Alexandria, VA, pp. 123–124, 2005.
Thomas, L., Coal Geology, second edition, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, UK, 2013.
Coffin, H.G. with Brown R.H. and Gibson, L.J., Origin by Design, Revised Edition, Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C., pp. 198–204, 2005.
Snelling, A.A., Earth’s Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation & the Flood, volume 2, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, pp. 553–554, 2009.
Snelling, Ref. 6, pp. 565–567.
Walker, T., Coal: memorial to the Flood, Creation 23(2):22–27, 2001; creation.com/coal-memorial-to-the-flood.
Snelling, Ref. 6, p. 555.
Cobb, J.C. and Cecil C.B. (Eds.), Modern and Ancient Coal-Forming Environments, GSA Special Paper 286, Geological Society of America, Boulder, CO, 1993.
Neuzil, S.G. and 3 others, Inorganic geochemistry of domed peat in Indonesia and its implication for the origin of mineral matter in coal: in: Cobb and Cecil (Eds.), Ref. 10, pp. 23–44.
Supardi, Subekty, A.D., and Neuzil, S.G., General geology and peat resources of the Siak Kanan and Bengkalis Island peat deposits, Sumatra, Indonesia; in: Cobb and Cecil (Eds.), Ref. 10, pp. 45–61.
Austin, S.A., Depositional Environment of the Kentucky No. 12 Coal Bed (Middle Pennsylvanian) of Western Kentucky, with Special Reference to the Origin of Coal Lithotypes, PhD thesis, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 1979.
Teichmüller, M., The genesis of coal from the viewpoint of coal petrology, International Journal of Coal Geology 12:1–87, 1989.
Poinar, Jr., G.O., Life in Amber, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, p. 14, 1992.
Thomas, Ref. 4, p. 3.
DeCourten, F., Dinosaurs of Utah, The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, UT, p. 221–224, 1998.
Mortenson, T., The Great Turning Point: The church’s catastrophic mistake in geology—before Darwin, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2004.
Carpenter, K., Behavior of hadrosaurs as interpreted from footprints in the ‘Mesaverde’ Group (Campanian) of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, Contributions to Geology, University of Wyoming 29(2):81–96, 1992.
Thulborn, RA., Ornithopod dinosaur tracks from the lower Jurassic of Queensland, Alcheringa 18:247–258, 1994.
DeCourten, Ref. 17, p. 221.
Nadon, G.C., Magnitude and timing of peat-to-coal compaction, Geology 26:727–730, 1998.
Archer, D., The Global Carbon Cycle, Princeton University Press, NJ, 2010.
Walker, T., Learning the lessons of Mount St Helens: How its eruption backs biblical history, Creation 39(3):23–27, 2017; creation.com/lessons-eruption.