Comment by dexwiz
3 months ago
For this reason, Earth will never make new coal. New oil will be formed, but coal is mostly compressed cellulose. Today it would be digested instead.
3 months ago
For this reason, Earth will never make new coal. New oil will be formed, but coal is mostly compressed cellulose. Today it would be digested instead.
Wood and other plant matter is still turning into peat under the right circumstances to this day. And peat is still slowly turning into various kinds of coal. It's true that the majority of coal (about 90%) originates from the carboniferous period, but microorganisms today does still not manage to break down all cellulose under all circumstances.
The Paleozoic peak in coal deposition was not due to white rot fungi evolution lagging behind lignin evolution. In fact we have plenty of evidence that fungi were pretty much always able to decompose lignin
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517943113
> Here, we demonstrate that lignin was of secondary importance in many floras and that shifts in lignin abundance had no obvious impact on coal formation. Evidence for lignin degradation—including fungal—was ubiquitous, and absence of lignin decay would have profoundly disrupted the carbon cycle. Instead, coal accumulation patterns implicate a unique combination of climate and tectonics during Pangea formation.