Ponce
20th July 2013, 09:34 AM
Could this be the start of what I keep saying all the time?...long article, go to link for the rest.
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The massive logs, gnarled stumps and matted leaves lying half buried on the rock-strewn hillside make it clear that a thick forest once stood there, trees that grew 150 ft. high and lived 1,000 years. "You can read the rings -- they look modern, like a lush forest area logged fairly recently," says Paleobotanist James Basinger of the University of Saskatchewan. "But then ) you look around, and you're in a desert. The only trees are dwarf willows one and two inches high." The sparse growth surrounding the half square mile of fallen trees is not surprising: the location is Axel Heiberg Island, less than 700 miles from the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic, an arid, frigid region hardly conducive to the growth of any vegetation, let alone large trees. Then how did a forest thrive? The answer, says Basinger, is that the stumps and logs are 45 million years old, remnants of trees that grew when Axel Heiberg Island -- and the world -- was much warmer.
Despite their great age, the stumps, logs and leaves are astonishingly well preserved. "This fossil forest is not petrified, turned to stone by minerals entering and replacing the wood cell structure," says Neil McMillan, of the Geological Survey of Canada, who discovered a similar but much smaller site 30 years ago on nearby Ellesmere Island. Instead, shallow burial in the Arctic soil has left the forest in a mummified state. As a result, says Basinger, "you can saw the wood. You can burn it." Indeed, during an expedition to the site in July, he actually brewed a pot of tea over burning fossil debris.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,145059,00.html
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The massive logs, gnarled stumps and matted leaves lying half buried on the rock-strewn hillside make it clear that a thick forest once stood there, trees that grew 150 ft. high and lived 1,000 years. "You can read the rings -- they look modern, like a lush forest area logged fairly recently," says Paleobotanist James Basinger of the University of Saskatchewan. "But then ) you look around, and you're in a desert. The only trees are dwarf willows one and two inches high." The sparse growth surrounding the half square mile of fallen trees is not surprising: the location is Axel Heiberg Island, less than 700 miles from the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic, an arid, frigid region hardly conducive to the growth of any vegetation, let alone large trees. Then how did a forest thrive? The answer, says Basinger, is that the stumps and logs are 45 million years old, remnants of trees that grew when Axel Heiberg Island -- and the world -- was much warmer.
Despite their great age, the stumps, logs and leaves are astonishingly well preserved. "This fossil forest is not petrified, turned to stone by minerals entering and replacing the wood cell structure," says Neil McMillan, of the Geological Survey of Canada, who discovered a similar but much smaller site 30 years ago on nearby Ellesmere Island. Instead, shallow burial in the Arctic soil has left the forest in a mummified state. As a result, says Basinger, "you can saw the wood. You can burn it." Indeed, during an expedition to the site in July, he actually brewed a pot of tea over burning fossil debris.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,145059,00.html