Two Australian reptiles kick up a skink over coal mining

By Wendy FrewAustralia editor, BBC News Online

6 August 2015 

This week a giant coal mine that could produce millions of tonnes of coal for export to India was scuttled by two Australian reptiles.

After a five-year approval process, the humble Yakka Skink - a secretive lizard known to hide under rocks and inside hollow logs - and the Ornamental Snake brought to a halt a A$16bn ($12bn; £8bn) mine, rail and port project proposed for the Galilee Basin in Queensland.

The two reptiles are among Australia's most threatened species.

Because the federal environment minister failed to take into account what the mine could mean for their habitat, his earlier approval for the mine was overturned by the Federal Court of Australia.

The mine may still go ahead but the delay is the latest chapter in a long history of Australian flora and fauna causing grief to developers.

Continued ...

Ancient Turtle Was as Big as Small Car

A turtle the size of a small car once roamed what is now South America 60 million years ago, suggests its fossilized remains.

Discovered in a coal mine in Colombia in 2005, the turtle was given the name Carbonemys cofrinii, which means "coal turtle." It wasn't until now that the turtle was examined and described in a scientific journal; the findings are detailed online today (May 17) in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.

The researchers say C. cofrinii belongs to a group of side-necked turtles known aspelomedusoides. The turtle's skull, roughly the size of an NFL football, was the most complete of the fossil remains.

In addition to its colossal size, the turtle would have been equipped with massive, powerful jaws, meaning it could've eaten just about anything in its range, from mollusks (a group that includes snails) to smaller turtles and even crocodiles, the researchers noted.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/20395-smart-car-sized-turtle-roamed-colombia.html

Extraordinary 298-Million-Year-Old Forest Discovered Under Chinese Coal Mine

American and Chinese scientists are flabbergasted after discovering a giant 298-million-year-old forest buried intact under a coal mine near Wuda, in Inner Mongolia, China.

They are calling it the Pompeii of the Permian period because, like the ancient Roman city, it was covered and preserved by volcanic ash.

Like Pompeii, this swamp forest is so perfectly maintained that scientists know where every plant originally was. This has allowed them to map it and to create the images above. This extraordinary finding "is like Pompeii", according to University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn, who characterized it as "a time capsule."

They are in fact finding entire trees and plants exactly as they were at the time of the volcanic eruption, just like archeologists in Pompeii found humans, animals and buildings at the base of Mount Vesuvius, near Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. Except Pompeei was buried in AD 79 and this forest was covered in ash 298 million years ago, during the Permian period.

Read on:  http://gizmodo.com/5886774/extraordinary-298+million+year+old-forest-discovered-under-chinese-coal-mine