Shocking White Ferns of Centralia
Deep in the heart of Pennsylvania's coal country runs the Carboniferous Lewellyn Formation. Once a vast tract of swampland, the area was home to 100 ft. tall Calamites (an extinct relative of modern herbaceous horsetails), giant tree ferns and other enormous plants, plus proportionally large insects.
The conditions during the intervening millennia were just right for the plants to break down into iron-based minerals, including pyrophyllite and kaolinite, leaving a coating of white powder over the impressions in the rock. In rare spots, the iron minerals come in yellow, orange or red, too. All this makes the fossils stand out in sharp contrast to the dark, gray shale matrix.
This is not a place for the timid. The shale is on a steep, slick slope covered in loose scree.The tees that look like good hand-holds are dead and rotten. Below the surface, fires burn in the coal veins, creating a sinkhole hazard all over the ghost town and on to the neighboring towns. However, the place I was hunting is definitely a beaten path these days, so there is probably a low risk of invisible disaster.
I always say that no rock is worth your life, but that doesn't stop me from living a little dangerously.
The conditions during the intervening millennia were just right for the plants to break down into iron-based minerals, including pyrophyllite and kaolinite, leaving a coating of white powder over the impressions in the rock. In rare spots, the iron minerals come in yellow, orange or red, too. All this makes the fossils stand out in sharp contrast to the dark, gray shale matrix.
This is not a place for the timid. The shale is on a steep, slick slope covered in loose scree.The tees that look like good hand-holds are dead and rotten. Below the surface, fires burn in the coal veins, creating a sinkhole hazard all over the ghost town and on to the neighboring towns. However, the place I was hunting is definitely a beaten path these days, so there is probably a low risk of invisible disaster.
I always say that no rock is worth your life, but that doesn't stop me from living a little dangerously.
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