27 October 2002 - the Carboniferous

The way I figure it, the reason so much coal and oil come from the Carboniferous is that the biological recycling system wasn’t tuned up yet, so a lot of plant waste got landfilled. I mean, forests had only been invented in the previous geological epoch, and it always takes time to work the bugs into a new system. But, at last, evolution, its pencil sharpened to a head-like nub, arrived at us, able to dig up the garbage of past ages and, finally, burn it.