An artist's painting of a tropical forest before it was preserved in volcanic ash 300 million years ago in what is now Inner Mongolia.
Image: Courtesy of Jun Wang / Painting: Ren Yugao
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About 300 million years ago, volcanic ash buried a tropical forest located in what is now Inner Mongolia, much like it did the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.
This preserved forest has given researchers the unusual opportunity to examine an ecosystem essentially frozen in place by a natural disaster, giving them a detailed look at ancient plant communities and a glimpse at the ancient climate.
This ancient, tropical forest created peat, or moist, acidic, decaying plant matter. Over geologic time, the peat deposits were subjected to high pressure and became coal, which is found in the area.
The volcano appears to have left a layer of ash that was originally 39 inches (100 centimeters) thick.
"This ash-fall buried and killed the plants, broke off twigs and leaves, toppled trees, and preserved the forest remains in place within the ash layer," the authors, led by Jun Wang of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China, wrote in an article published Monday (Feb. 20) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The ash layer dated to about 298 million years ago, early in the Permian Period, when the supercontinent Pangea was coming together.
The researchers examined three sites with a total area of 10,764 square feet (1,000 square meters) near Wuda, China. At these sites, they counted and mapped the fossilized plants. The tallest trees that formed the upper canopy—species in the genera Sigillaria and Cordaites—grew to 82 feet (25 meters) or more. Lower down, tree ferns formed another canopy. A group of now-extinct, spore-producing trees called Noeggerathiales and palm-like cycads grew below these, they found. [Image Gallery: A Petrified Forest]
"It's marvelously preserved," University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist and study researcher Hermann Pfefferkorn said in a press release issued by the university. "We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That's really exciting."
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7 Comments
Add CommentInteresting story. Thanx.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease STOP trying to protect us from SI units.
When they say they examined 1000 square meters, they almost certainly were not estimating down to the closest square foot.
"a total area of 10,764 square feet (1,000 square meters)" looks goofy.
It would look a little less goofy if you gave the nice, round estimates first, and then if you insist on stressing the "American" instead of the "Scientific", include the Myanmar and US units parenthetically.
Look at another strange number:
25 meters easily expresses a resolution of about 5 meters. 82 feet is probably false precision.
We are talking about estimating how high was a forest canopy in a 300mya forest... getting within 5m is pretty good for estimating the height of a modern forest. Calling it to the closest foot is innumerate.
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment, SciDad. I wish you were my Dad, because the one I was stuck with was an inconsequential hippie collectivist. I want to be consequential, and the way towards that is a collective measurement system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, the measuring system you denigrate is not "American" by name - it's "Imperial", which is fitting since it was developed and has been continued by colonialist oppressors of people world-wide.
The continued use of the Imperial measurement system is one primary cause of Global Warming. The biggest economy in the world uses it, namely the US. China is big, but mainly because of the US market, so yes, the US is ultimately to blame.
The imposition of metric measuring should help cut the US down to size - gutting their space program and forcing them to adopt collective healthcare won't work fast enough by themselves.
Conservative Republicans should be squirming in their snuggies over this forest buried in ash.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou may refer to the American measurement system as Imperial, but it varies from British Imperial too much to be called such.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn Imperial gallon actually made sense in that it was related to the volume of 10lbs of water. I'm not sure what your American gallon is related to, if anything.
Also, an Imperial quart has 40 ounces, not 32. A quart, therefore has 40 ounces. US units have a "dry quart", Imperial does not. And so on.
Sault- There you go again. Just have to politicize every article, don't you? Well, I hope no one lowers themselves to your level of assininity and bothers to acknowledge you. Kind of wish I hadn't bothered to myself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou should check your history,the U.S.Bureau of standards and measures was established 16 years before the british copied them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe colonialist imperialists have converted to Metric.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only Countries left using Imperial system are the USA and that other bastion of democracy that was formally called Burma