Posted on 02/24/2012 5:39:14 PM PST by SunkenCiv
A 300-million-year-old forest has been found preserved by volcanic ash, just as the Roman town of Pompeii was.
The remarkable discovery was made near a coal mine at the city of Wuda in China, by a University of Pennsylvania scientist and Chinese researchers.
The study site is unique as it gives a snapshot of a moment in time. Because volcanic ash covered a large expanse of forest over the course of only a few days, the plants were preserved as they fell, in many cases in the exact locations where they grew.
'It's marvellously preserved,' said Hermann Pfefferkorn, a paleobotanist from Penn's Department of Earth and Environmental Science.
'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.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Rock on: Fossilised trees have been found on other sites -- this one was discovered embedded in a quarry face above Bacup, Lancashire
Whoops.
300 million year old fossilized forest discovered under coal mine in China
ZME Science | 2/21/12
Posted on 02/22/2012 4:01:42 AM PST by LibWhacker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2849699/posts
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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Where’s the rest of the guy?
I’ll bet they would rather have had the forest turn into a sea of oil.
A forest of fossilized trees under a coal mine ain’t much of a tourist attraction.
Next Season on the History Channel, watch Jim and James tackle the lava embedded goldmine on “Volcano Loggers”
bill for new keyboard headed your way!
Do you accept wood as payment?
“I’ll bet they would rather have had the forest turn into a sea of oil.
A forest of fossilized trees under a coal mine ain’t much of a tourist attraction.”
Maybe not a tourist attraction, but large hunks of old wood can be VERY valuable. The below link to an ebay auction is asking $250,000 for a 45 foot long hunk.
Just a suggestion here sc: even though this topic was pinged before it did not have any pictures; only an artist’s rendering. Others on your list may be interested in actually seeing the pics (which are awesome!). Like I said...just a thought/suggestion.
Got THAT right :)
I’m just giving sunkenciv a rash, you saw his ‘whoops’ when he posted that un-dead wood accidentally in post 1.
That’s some “woody”. Definitely would like to see who it belonged to. Perhaps an old Chinaman named “Big Dong Wong”.
Wouldn’t it be great if we had a conservative candidate for POTUS with the last name Wood? Think of the bumpersticker and button possibilities.
A kiwi friend of mine clued me in that it is a huge business in New Zealand.
LOL! I burst out laughing when I saw your comments.
Good one!
Never heard of this before.
You betchya! LOL!
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