FORMATION OF COAL DURING THE CRETACEOUS PERIOD AND ITS ROLE IN THE GLOBAL PROCESSES OF COAL ACCUMULATION |
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| Abstract: | P. I. Stepanov suggested that during the Cretaceous there probably took place a considerable accumulation of coal, although that time was always considered to have been a period of attenuation of coal accumulation. The analysis of facies of the Cretaceous deposits in the far east maritime region of the U. S. S. R. as well as of those of Alaska led the author to conclude that coal accumulation during the Cretaceous was tremendous. This conjecture has now been confirmed: the new estimate of coal reserves of the U. S. S. R. has shown the Cretaceous Lena coalfield to be the largest in the world. Tremendous reserves of coal are also concentrated in the Bureya, Maritime, Anadyr and Sakhalin Cretaceous coal bearing basins of the U. S. S. R. in the Ryōseki basin of Japan and in the Cretaceous coal deposits of North America, particularly in Alaska where a major coalfield very likely exists. Thus it may now be considered that during the Cretaceous there accumulated reserves of coal comparable in immensity to those accumulated during the Tertiary and undoubtedly much larger than those of the Permian, Carboniferous and Jurassic. It may be asserted that rate of coal accumulation kept ever increasing in the course of geological time, and the Cretaceous may be regarded as a period of very intensive coal accumulation. Following up Stepanov's idea we can point out the knots of Cretaceous coal accumulation: Lena, Alaska, Anadyr, Sakhalin — Maritime. The new data on the Cretaceous coal accumulation should be taken into account in any reconstruction of the history of geological development of the earth and of the evolution of the organic world. --Author's English Summary. |
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