Squirrel and sword fish fossil found next to each other in the middlands.?

Question

My grandad was a coal miner and in the 1970's he found 2 fossils in coal seams one was a swordfish and straight after he found a squirrel fossil. He found it at donisthorpe in the midlands which is in the middle of the country. Is there any explanation to this other than the Noah Theory. They cut up the fossils whilst they were mining.

Answer 1

OK, from your description, Donisthorpe was a colliery that mined coal from Carboniferous-period deposits, which are around 300 million years old and buried between 600 and 1000 feet beneath the Leicestershire countryside, in the English midlands.

Assuming that your grandfather was telling the truth (which I have no reason to doubt), the most likely explanation is that the fossils, although genuine, were not what they thought.  Bear in mind that the miners were experts at extracting the coal, but would not be able to make an accurate identification of the fossils - something even an experienced palaeontologist would struggle with, especially as fossils are rarely well preserved and complete.  The history of geology is littered with tales of genuinely mis-identified fossils.

The other thing to bear in mind is that in a coal mine, there's a great deal of rock that isn't actually coal, but nevertheless has to be removed in order to get at the coal. These rocks often comprise shales of marine origin.  You don't need to invoke a biblical "Noah's Flood"; the coal swamps, sitting atop deltas, were periodically flooded in much the same way as the modern Irrawaddy delta flooded in Burmah last month.  Geologists use fossils found in the marine beds within the coal-bearing strata (goniatites, a sort of early form of ammonite) to make accurate correlations and predictions.  

The most likely explanation by far is that the fossils were extracted from shales that sat adjacent to the coal seam.  The fish is entirely plausible, swordfish or otherwise.  The "squirrel" was most likely an amphibian or reptile.  Mammals (including squirels) did not evolve until many millions of years after the Carboniferous period.  Assuming a flooding event, it's easy to explain how a dead reptile or amphibian came to be fossilized in a marine bed alongside the remains of a fish.

It's a shame the miners did not keep the fossils!

Answer 2

This earth has been around for billions and billions of years and it is constatly changing with earth quakes and the ozone etc.  I am sure that at one time that area was an ocean and then later it was land.  its possible.  Just because that they found the fossils close together doesnt mean that those animals died around the same time.  These two species could have been aroundi n two different eras.  It all depends on the amount of erosion and so forth.

Answer 3

1. Whatever you learn here, don't dispute your grandfather's word.  He was there.  He knows what he saw.  

2. There are any number of explanations for finding the fossil remains of a small animal and a "swordfish" together in the same coal bed.  Deposits from a flood, however, would tend to be found in layers of shale, sandstone, slate, etc. - rocks that were once mud.    Coalfields are formed from deposits of plant and animal remains in large swampy areas.

I think that it is more likely that the fish was dragged ashore by a reptile of some type, who ate what he liked and left the rest.

Squirrels, as we know them, were probably not alive during the carboniferous period. (See web link)   But small animals whose bones closely resemble those of a squirrel did live in the coal swamps of that period.

Answer 4

The way that story sounds makes it hard to believe you've got it correct.  How, for example, do you know it was a swordfish and then a squirrel?  This makes your grandfather sound remarkable; a coal miner capable of making surprisingly accurate feats of identification of fossils from diverse vertebrate groups.

It would also have been a coal mine containing coal that must've built up within the last 50 million years or so.  Squirrel fossils, in the widest sense, aren't known which are older than that.  I've never heard of any commercially exploited British coal seam dating from the Eocene or younger.  As for swordfish, their known fossil record is even more recent.  The oldest specimens date from the Oligocene.  That detail would knock another 20 million years off

Ignoring those highly significant details, there are fossil localities which yield a mixture of oceanic and terrestrial vertebrates.  They can result in various ways; for example, by silt getting deposited in the sea around river estuaries, or by deviations in the coastline allowing for some marine incursions into generally terrestrial deposits.

Answer 5

Your question should have read,: Squirrel and Swordfish found next to each other in the Madlands.

Answer 6

now was it a whole-specimen fossil or just bones here and there put together??  for a WHOLE squirrel and a swordfish to be found lying in the same strata means that there is probably something tremendous that happened for those animals to be preserved.  lets say there wasnt any flood, you wouldnt find those there and if you did find fossils there.. it would be scattered (the bones) since it wasnt tightly preserved.. so anyways.. the flood is probably what caused it and then the period of world-wide glaciation (icce age) preserved the animals for it to be fossils.

Answer 7

Coal is made from fossilised trees (home to squirrels)

and the swordfish could have been in a river in the forest

Answer 8

There could be, but as an atheist I could go along with the theory that there was a sudden flood.