The World's Oldest Underground Fire Has Been Burning For 6,000 Years (Coal Seam)

[NickB79]

http://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-oldest-underground-fire-has-been-burning-fo-1539049759

If you've heard of underground coal fires, then you've probably heard of the one raging under the abandoned town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, since 1962. Fifty-two years is a long time—and a lot of coal—but that's barely a blink compared to Burning Mountain in Australia, which has been ablaze for 6,000 years.

I found this part amazing:

Even more remarkably, ancient subterranean fires shaped the very landscape of the West. "Much of the landscape of the American West—its mesas and escarpments—is the result of vast, ancient coal fires," writes Kevin Krajick in Smithsonian Magazine. "Those conflagrations formed 'clinker'—a hard mass of fused stony matter. Surfaces formed in this way resist erosion far better than adjacent unfired ones, leaving clinker outcrops."

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Amazing, indeed!