City-sized fossilized forest found
City-sized fossilized forest found
Courtesy University of Bristol
Researchers have found a city-sized fossilized forest in an Illinois coal mine, and they say it transforms our understanding of the Earth’s first rainforests.
Nowhere else, scientists say, can one literally walk through such a huge swath of rainforest from the Carboniferous era. That was a time 360 million to 290 million years ago when true reptiles appeared, giant dragonflies buzzed and vast swamps spread, which later formed coal.
A huge earthquake 300 million years ago caused the whole region around this forest to collapse below sea level, according to the scientists. Mud then buried the terrain and preserved it forever.
The forest offers a bizarre medley of extinct plants. They include plentiful club mosses, or primitive moss-like plants, more than 40 metres (131 feet) high. These towered over mixes of tree ferns, shrubs and tree-sized horsetails.
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