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World's first rainforest found in Illinois mongabay.com April 23, 2007
The 300 million year fossilized forest consists of a mix of extinct plants including a 130-foot high (40 meter) canopy of club mosses, a sub-canopy of tree ferns, and tree-sized horsetails. The forest was preserved by an accident of geology when a giant earthquake some 300 million years ago caused the whole region to drop below sea level, burying the forest in mud, which later fossilized. "It was an amazing experience. We drove down the mine in an armoured vehicle, until we were a hundred metres below the surface. The fossil forest was rooted on top of the coal seam, so where the coal had been mined away the fossilized forest was visible in the ceiling of the mine," said Howard Falcon-Lang of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and lead author of the study. "We walked for miles and miles along pitch-black passages with the fossil forest just above our heads. We were able to make a map of the forest by the light of our miner's lamps."
"As there is nothing like it around today, before our work we knew very little about the ecological preferences and community structure of these ancient plants," explained Falcon-Lang. "This spectacular discovery allows us to track how the species make-up of the forest changed across the landscape, and how that species make-up is effected by subtle differences in the local environment." CITATION: William A. DiMichele, Howard J. Falcon-Lang, W. John Nelson, Scott D. Elrick and Philip R. Ames (2007). Ecological gradients within a Pennsylvanian mire forest. Geology, May 2007; v. 35; no. 5; p. 415–418; doi: 10.1130/G23472A Comments? News options News index | RSS | Add to MyYahoo! Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing |
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