Tamilrosary

300 மில்லியன் ஆண்டுகளாக எரிமலை சாம்பலினால் மறைக்கப்பட்டு பாதுகாக்கப்பட்ட காடு சீனாவில் கண்டு பிடிக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது. சீன மூன்று பல்கலைக்கழக மாணவர்கள் தங்களின் ஆராட்சியாக இந்த வனத்தை ஆராட்சி செய்துள்ளார்கள்.

அங்கு மறைந்திருந்த காட்டு மரங்கள் ஒரு ஒரு கிழையில் இருந்து மறு கிழை, அதில் இருந்து மறு கிழை இப்படியாக கண்டுபிடிக்கபட்டது.

The study site, located near Wuda, China, is unique as it gives a snapshot of a moment in time. Because volcanic ash covered a large expanse of forest in 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 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.
Due to nearby coal-mining activities unearthing large tracts of rock, the size of the researchers’ study plots is also unusual. They were able to examine a total of 1,000 m2 of the ash layer in three different sites located near one another, an area considered large enough to meaningfully characterize the local paleoecology.
The fact that the coal beds exist is a legacy of the ancient forests, which were peat-depositing tropical forests. The peat beds, pressurized over time, transformed into the coal deposits.
The scientists were able to date the ash layer to approximately 298 million years ago. That falls at the beginning of a geologic period called the Permian, during which Earth’s continental plates were still moving toward each other to form the supercontinent Pangea. North America and Europe were fused together, and China existed as two smaller continents. All overlapped the equator and thus had tropical climates.
At that time, Earth’s climate was comparable to what it is today, making it of interest to researchers like Pfefferkorn who look at ancient climate patterns to help understand contemporary climate variations.