The Oblate Spheroid, An Earthworm's View - Fossil Forest Find

Last week, geologists surveying a coalmine 250 feet below the current surface of the Earth's crust, came upon a preserved 300 million year old forest. Measuring over four-square miles in size, the discovery is the largest fossil forest ever to date (as mining continues, the size of the exposed fossil forest grows by the day).

The discovery of the fossil remains were in the ceiling of the coalmine and are unusual, in that the fossilized trees of a forest are still standing and preserved standing straight up, as if frozen in time.

This left lead study author Bill DiMichele, a pale botanist at the Smithsonian Institution, to observe, "We get to walk under it and look up at it," he said. "It's the earthworm's view."