Veres János: A bükkábrányi 8 millió éves mocsárerdő (Múzeumi Mozaik 7. Miskolc, 2007)

(Ancient-Danube, Ancient Tisza) rushed into the Carpathia Basin which, at that time, was the Pannon Sea. The rivers washed and deposited all their silt into the basin which became even more pronuonced when the base of the Carpathia Basin was raised to the point where the connection between the Pannon Sea and the Thetis Sea was severed. The remaining small sized landlocked seas were gradually filled in by the rivers. The desalination of the coastal swamps began and the typical plant species of this region was probably the bald cypress (taxonium). The climate was significantly warmer, subtropical, in which the flora also entailed alder, cat's tail and birch mostly. During the upper Miocene a large (the size of half the country today) forest covered most of what is the Northern Mountain Range today. The devastation of these forests has resulted in an 11 million years old process, the formation of the local lignite on which a large degree of the domestic power supply is based. This, once vast forest probably covered most of the swampy northern coast of the Pannon Sea that was waving over the entire landscape. THE FORMATION OF THE FOREST SECTION This part of the forest in question had been covered in sand 6 metres deep preventing it from falling and fossilizing thus preserving it with a minimal change in its structural morphology for the past 8 million years. How can it be? A sub-science within archeology, called taphonomy, has been studying such processes for quite some time. The name came from I. A. Efremov Russian paleobiologist in 1940 and derives from the Greek words: taphos (grave) and nomos (law). This science, whic is commonly called the „science of burial", studies processes like what happens to an organism after its death and until its discovery as a fossil. This includes decomposition, post-mortem transport, burial, compaction, and other