COMPARISON OF THE PETROGRAPHY, PALYNOLOGY, AND PALEOBOTANY OF THE LITTLE FIRE CREEK COAL BED, SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA, USA

Two continuous cores that penetrated the Lower Pennsylvanian Little Fi n Creek coal bed in the Southwestern coal field in southwestern Virgin ia were sampled and X-ray radiographed to determine subunit distinctio ns. Comparison of petrographic, palynologic, and paleobotanic data fro m the same sample sets from the two cores allowed for comparison of co mpositional data within the Little Fire Creek coal bed. The proximate, petrographic, palynologic, and plant tissue data from two sets of sam ples indicate a high ash, gelocollinite- and liptinite-rich coal consi sting of a relatively diverse paleoflora, including lycopsid trees, sm all lycopsids, tree ferns, small ferns, pteridosperms (seed ferns), an d rare calamites and cordaites. The relatively very high ash yields (3 -80 wt%), the relatively thin subunits (1-28 cm), and the large scale vertical variations in palynomorph floras suggest that the study area was at the edge of the paleopeat-forming environment. As a result, mos t of the compositional correspondences are among those components indi cative of degradation or decomposition.