A Question Of Age

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31206, 2 November 1966, Page 16

A Question Of Age

Sir, —According to a Press Association report in “The Press” on October 18, “coral fossils and remnants of luxuriant vegetation 600 million years old” have been found lying “in limestone and coal seam layers” in Antarctica. This is many millions of years before coal deposits were laid down anywhere else. However, according to your own report four days later, “the mountains were from 250 million to 300 million years old,” but you do not state which report is incorrect. An article, “Working With Coast Stone,” which you published on Saturday, states that the average geological age of the stone is “25,000 million years, which puts it in the Triassic period.” Since the world is estimated to have been formed 4000 or 5000 million years ago, this makes the stone about 20,000 million years older than earth! Even 250 million years would be appreciably older than the Triassic period.—Yours, etc., PAUL MALING. October 30, 1966. [The Triassic period was about 200 million years ago, according to Professor Gage, head of the geology department of Canterbury University.]