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Seeming contradiction
Under the heading History I see the following:
In Roman Britain, with the exception of two modern fields,"the Romans were exploiting coals in all the major coalfields in England and Wales by the end of the second century AD".
Yet in the very next paragraph, still under History, I see this:
No evidence exists of the product being of great importance in Britain before about AD 1000, the High Middle Ages.[31]
These two statements seem to contradict each other. Or was use by the Romans from about 200 on unimportant? I don't know.
"The ability to produce lignin led to the evolution of the first trees. But bacteria and fungi did not immediately evolve the ability to decompose lignin, so the wood did not fully decay but became buried under sediment, eventually turning into coal. About 300 million years ago, mushrooms and other fungi developed this ability, ending the main coal-formation period of earth's history.[1] However, a 2016 study largely refuted this idea, finding extensive evidence of lignin degradation during the Carboniferous, and that shifts in lignin abundance had no impact on coal formation. They suggested that climatic and tectonic factors were a more plausible explanation.[2]"
Actually, that is not true. The original article where the claim was made is the 2012 article by Floudas et al in Science, whic was cited 1402 times, and recent citations do not create an impression that the main idea was "largely refuted". The article by Nilsen that ostensibly refutes this idea was cited just 177 times, and there is no indication that Nielsen's is accepted by scientific community.
To check that, I took the recent review where both Floudas and Nilsen articles were analyzed (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copbio.2018.11.011), which was cited 77 times (and that is very good for a review article), and the review says:
"Based on comparative genomics and molecular clock analyses, the evolution of lignin-decomposition capacities of fungi is thought to have originated from the ancestor of Auriculariales and related fungi during late Carboniferous [approximately 295 million years ago (Mya)] [26,27�], when the reduction of coal deposition began, thereby supporting the above-mentioned lag hypothesis [27�]. However, it was recently proposed that the accumulation of coal was controlled by a combination of both climatic and tectonic factors, and the evolution of fungal lignin-degrading traits could have potentially occurred before the Carboniferous period [25]. To gain new insights into the evolutionary era of the lignin-degrading capacity of fungi, an ancestral enzyme resurrection approach has been conducted with peroxidase [28��,29]. In this approach, the ancestral sequence was reconstructed based on a phylogenetic analysis with a maximum likelihood for 113 peroxidase sequences [28��]. Lignin peroxidase and versatile peroxidase are phylogenetically distant, despite the fact that both enzymes share an exposed catalytic tryptophan, which is necessary for the electron transfer from non-phenolic lignin to an internal heme, thus enabling the oxidation of non-phenolic lignin [30–32]. Resurrected enzymes with catalytic tryptophan were able to oxidize veratryl alcohol, a non-phenolic lignin model substrate, and this type of enzymes were estimated to be appeared approximately 200 Mya [28��]. In contrast, more ancient peroxidases, including the peroxidase from common ancestor of the Polyporales do not have a catalytic tryptophan and lack catalytic activity towards nonphenolic lignin. However, they are able to oxidize Mn2+, a phenolic lignin model compound (2,6-dimethoxyphenol), and a low-redox potential dye (2,20-azinobis[3-ethylbenzothia-zoline-6-sulfonate]). Therefore, the emergence of peroxidases containing catalytic tryptophan is believed to be the evolutionary point at which fungi acquired the capacity to carry out non-phenolic lignin depolymerization."
This means later works confirm conclusions made by Floudas (ref 27) that a full scale lignin degradation capabilities were developed by fungi at ca 200 MYa, and do not confirm conclusions by Nilsen (ref 25). I am going to change the article accordingly.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:02, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. NytharT.C 00:02, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
