The Paleocene coal swamps
Vast peat-forming wetlands lay down some of the largest coal reserves ever formed.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 7 million years
- Known to
- ± 2 million years
- Era
- Paleocene, Cenozoic
Warm, wet, low-relief landscapes across the northern continents support enormous peat-accumulating swamps through the Paleocene, and the coal they leave — in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, in the German and Polish lignite fields, in Alberta — includes some of the thickest and most extensive seams on Earth. The Powder River seams reach thirty metres and today supply a large share of United States coal. Carbon buried by these forests over millions of years is being returned to the atmosphere in decades.