300 Million Year Old Forest discovered in China

Wuda: US researches from University of Pennsylvania have discovered 300 Million Year Old Forest discovered in Wuda, a place in Northern China. The Pompeii-like tropical forest was preserved in ash when a volcano erupted, according paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn and colleagues. The site is unique as it gives a snapshot of a moment in time. As the 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.

“It’s marvelously preserved,” said Pfefferkorn. “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.” The researchers also found some smaller trees with leaves, branches, trunk and cones intact, preserved in their entirety.

The scientists were able to date the ash layer to approximately 298 million years ago. That falls at the beginning of a geologic period called the Permian, during which Earth’s continental plates were still moving toward each other to form the supercontinent Pangea. North America and Europe were fused together, and China existed as two smaller continents. All overlapped the equator and thus had tropical climates.

“It’s like Pompeii: Pompeii gives us deep insight into Roman culture, but it doesn’t say anything about Roman history in and of itself,” said Pfefferkorn. “But on the other hand, it elucidates the time before and the time after. This finding is similar. It’s a time capsule and therefore it allows us now to interpret what happened before or after much better.”