300-Million-Year-Old Forest Discovered Preserved in Volanic Ash

[Tank]

300-Million-Year-Old Forest Discovered Preserved in Volanic Ash

ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2012) — Pompeii-like, a 300-million-year-old tropical forest was preserved in ash when a volcano erupted in what is today northern China. A new study by University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn and colleagues presents a reconstruction of this fossilized forest, lending insight into the ecology and climate of its time...

..."It's marvelously preserved," Pfefferkorn said. "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...

Plant fossils are much rarer than animal fossils as plants are much more delicate and even when dead are subject to decay in a way the bones of animals are not. This is a marvellous find of the first order.

[The Magic Pudding]

[Asmodean]

Good! Now, to find a preserved seed and resurrect something from it. 

[McQ]

It's not 300 million years old. It's a few thousand at most. Don't you know anything? God put it there like that to give the appearance of great age. Jeez, do I have to explain everything?


Nice find.

Also, LOVE this guy's name: Hermann Pfefferkorn

[Ecurb Noselrub]

I like those tall ones in the artist's rendition.  In fact, I want one in my front yard.