A piece of ancient wood found recently in the Canadian Arctic. [Photograph courtesy Joel Barker]
Posted on 12/20/2010 8:45:44 PM PST by SunkenCiv
An ancient mummified forest, complete with well-preserved logs, leaves, and seedpods, has been discovered deep in the Canadian Arctic... The dry, frigid site is now surrounded by glaciers and is completely treeless, except for a few bonsai-size dwarf trees... located on Ellesmere Island, one of the world's northernmost landmasses. The rangers had come across wood scattered on the ground from much larger trees than the few dwarfs currently in the area, including logs that were several feet long... When Barker and colleagues found where the scattered logs were coming from -- a slope that had been eroded by a river -- they dug in and found many more logs, as well as leaves and seedpods... The mummified trees were likely preserved so long because they were buried quickly by landslides and thus protected from air and water, which hastens decomposition. By studying features of the logs, leaves, and seedpods, the team identified some tree species, including pine, birch, and spruce. The mummified forest seems to resemble modern forests growing hundreds of miles to the south, suggesting the forest must have grown during a time when the Arctic was much warmer, Barker said. Based on the tree species, the scientists think the forest lived between ten and two million years ago... By counting tree rings in some of the logs, the team found the trees were at least 75 years old when they were entombed. But the rings were very small, showing that the trees grew extremely slowly... The scientists also want to get a better idea of how the local forest responded as the planet cooled around five million years ago, changing from "greenhouse" to "icehouse" conditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
A piece of ancient wood found recently in the Canadian Arctic. [Photograph courtesy Joel Barker]
“How far is the Old Log Inn” ping.
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The big freeze is overdue and coming. We’re doomed.
Quick! Somebody tell AlGore!
He’ll find a way to fix it! Global warming! Er.. no. Climate change!!
Yeah. That’s the ticket.
I hear that “Are you logged in?” was quite the wit back there.
Gee! You think so?
so all the polar bears must of died from globull warming then... wait, what???
Antarctic forests reveal ancient trees
Geologists have discovered the remains of three ancient deciduous Antarctic forests, complete with fossils of fallen leaves scattered around the tree trunks.
The clusters of petrified tree stumps were found upright in the original living positions they held during the Permian period.
Some stumps were even poking through the snowfield in the Beardmore Glacier area, said U.S. geologist Professor Molly Miller of Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
"These were not scrubby little things," Miller said. "These were big trees."
Some are estimated to be as tall as 24.6 meters, based on their trunk diameter.
fossil tree trunk, ANTARCTIC
Fossil Araucariaceaean trunk, ANTARCTIC
Pertified tree trunk, ANTARCTIC
Not strange at all when you consider that Greenland was warm with farms 800 years ago.
The Goracle will be beside himself..
Hi:
I just want to alert everybody that on Tuesday, December 21 at 8 pm on PBS they are showing a Nova program called Arctic Dinosaurs. It appears that they were living right up to the arctic circle. It was warmer then. I’ve seen this program before and it’s actually quite interesting.
Even though I don’t post much, i’m a lurker and enjoy the Catastrophism article list and thank you for the effort of keeping it going.
I was wondering if someone could make a program alert thread that would keep people updated on interesting tv programs that are upcoming. Something like a megathread where anybody could alert us all to any programs that might be interesting. Just throwing this out as an idea for anybody to pick up on.
Thanks
P.S. Not sure if it would have been better in it’s own thread.
hmmmmm, sounds like it might have been a tad warmer there at one time.....
Wow.. “global warming” ten million years ago? Who’d a thunk?
Maybe Penn State’s Michael Mann and the East Anglia “climate” scammers can examine the rings from these logs... and then shove the logs up their behinds.
OK I just created a separate thread on this in the hope more people would see it.
PBS Program Alert- Nova:Arctic Dinosaurs Dec 21 8 pm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2645688/posts
I hope that works better.
thanks
I thought it was “The Red Log Inn?”
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