Forest of Ashes

Though we have been able to learn some about the history of our planet through observations and recordings left behind by our ancestors, so much of Earth's history is shrouded in mystery and subsidized with speculation. One of the only ways we can find clues to the past is through fossilization, which is a rare occurrence and usually doesn't preserve something entirely. Now, however, scientists have been given the opportunity to look at an ecosystem literally millions of years old and see what it was like then.

298 million years ago, a volcanic eruption in what is now Inner Mongolia covered a forest ecosystem with a 39 inch thick layer of ash. Much like the well known story of Mount Vesuvius coating Pompeii in ash and preserving everything down to the shapes of the victims' bodies, this layer of ash essentially froze the forest in place. The ash layer and the eruption date to the early Permian Period, when the forming of the super continent Pangaea had begun.

Researchers examined three sites, 1,000 square meters in total, near Wuda China. University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn calls it "marvelously preserved" to the point where they can "find a branch with the leaves attached, and then ... then next branch and the next branch and the next branch" an so on. The tallest trees they found grew about 25 meters high or higher, and they also found tree ferns and a group of currently extinct trees known as Noeggerathiales that produced spores.

Having an ecosystem frozen in time and preserved like this for hundreds of millions of years is very rare and presents an opportunity to learn that should not be passed up. Researchers can continue to study this area and gain valuable knowledge as to what systems took place within this forest. Uniformitarianism states that "the past is the key to the present", so we should study the past in order to better understand the world we live in today. Studying this ecosystem and learning the complexities it holds to the best of our ability will provide valuable insight into a period of Earth's history that we simply don't know as much about as we would like to.

To see the original article, click here.