300-Million-Year Old Forest preserved like Pompeii

Have you imagined how the forest 300 million years ago looked like? Scientists from USA and China found an old forest buried intact under a coal mine near Wuda, in Inner Mongolia, China. The ancient forest is almost 300 million year old and was preserved by volcanic ash, much like Pompeii. 

Six groups of trees were discovered in the forest, including low tree ferns, 80-foot-high Sigillaria and Cordaites trees, and also an extinct spore-bearing tree called Noeggerathiales. The ash preserved these trees so well that scientists could find branches with leaves attached.

The coal that is mined today at Wuda site is composed of the plants and trees that grew over the ash several hundred million years. Scientist claim that this forest would have turned into coal as well, if there was not a volcanic eruption.

wuda

Interestingly, at that time, Earth’s climate was comparable to what it is today, making it of interest to researchers who look at ancient climate patterns to help understand contemporary climate variations.

The findings are indeed “firsts” on many counts.

Herman Pfefferkorn, a leader of the research group, said that this finding is indeed “firsts” on many counts: “This is the first such forest reconstruction in Asia for any time interval, it’s the first of a peat forest for this time interval and it’s the first with Noeggerathiales as a dominant group”.

A reconstruction of the 300-million-year-old peat-forming forest at a site near Wuda, China is presented below:

F4.medium

The study was supported by the Chinese Academy of Science, the National Basic Research Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the University of Pennsylvania.

The full scientifc article about this incredible finding can be reached here: Permian vegetational Pompeii from Inner Mongolia and its implications for landscape paleoecology and paleobiogeography of Cathaysia

 

6 thoughts on “300-Million-Year Old Forest preserved like Pompeii

  1. It’s a good evident the globe gives us human a chance to do more deep research on ancient ecology, genetics, conservation, etc.

  2. I challenge the claim that Earth’s climate was comparable to what it is today,” In the mid-Permian, 300 million years ago, the Earth was in an ice age. Miles-thick ice sheets covered much of the southern continent, and floating pack ice likely covered the northern polar ocean. The tropics were dominated by lush rainforests, now preserved as coal beds.” – See more at: http://www.astrobio.net/topic/solar-system/earth/climate/earth-shes-hot-and-cold/#sthash.VCsiKO3f.dpuf

    1. Yes, it could happen. I think that Earth climate is like sinusoid (with some noises of course). I am not sure if human activity can influence some natural rhythm of Earth that is caused by much powerful forces (gravity, sun impact, plate tectonics etc.).

  3. Vast tracts of land covered in volcanic ash……sounds like a huge catastrophic event…and that would be an understatement…..

    1. I agree with you Russell. We should take it seriously and think maybe about colonizing other planets just in case. Instead of spending billions of dollars on senseless fight against climate change. In my opinion, we cannot win this fight, as climate was changing before human activity.

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