Permian Pompeii: 300-Million-Year-Old Tropical Forest Found Preserved in Ash
Posted on February 20, 2012
A 300-million-year-old forest was preserved in ash when a volcano erupted in what is today northern China. The find is being described as "Pompeii-like" by the scientists. Because volcanic ash covered a large expanse of forest over the course of only a few days, the plants were preserved as they fell, in many cases in the exact locations where they grew. The researchers also found some small trees with leaves, branches, trunk and cones intact, preserved in their entirety.
The ancient peat forest contained trees that resembled giant feature dusters. Nature has published an artist's impression of the ancient forest here.
The scientists were able to date the ash layer to approximately 298 million years ago, which falls at the beginning of a geologic period called the Permian.
Hermann Pfefferkorn, a professor in Penn's Department of Earth and Environmental Science, says, "It's marvelously preserved. 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."
Pfefferkorn collaborated on the work with three Chinese colleagues: Jun Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yi Zhang of Shenyang Normal University and Zhuo Feng of Yunnan University. Their paper will be published next week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.