'Chinese Pompeii' 300m-year-old forest preserved in ash

'Chinese Pompeii' 300m-year-old forest preserved in ash

www.bbc.co.uk

Researchers have unearthed a forest in northern China preserved under a layer of ash deposited 300 million years ago.

Preservation of the forest, just west of the Inner Mongolian district of Wuda, has been likened to that of the Italian city of Pompeii.

The researchers were able to "reconstruct" nearly 1,000 sq m of the forest's trees and plant distributions.

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The team identified six groups of trees, ranging from low-lying tree ferns to now-extinct 25m trees Sigillaria and Cordaites, as well well-preserved specimens of another extinct group called Noeggerathiales.

It's a stunning discovery. Only days ago, I read that Russian scientists grew a plant from a 30,000 years prehistoric seed found under the Siberian permafrost and now this. I thought 30,000 years was a long time, but this is a discovery of a forest that dates back 300 million years!

It's a shame that these extinct trees cannot be recreated in a lab. In 2007, however, they found a baby mammoth under the permafrost and scientists from Russia and Japan believe that they will be able to clone a mammoth by 2017.

www.bbc.co.uk
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Originally posted by Mdv2

The team identified six groups of trees, ranging from low-lying tree ferns to now-extinct 25m trees Sigillaria and Cordaites, as well well-preserved specimens of another extinct group called Noeggerathiales.

It's a stunning discovery. Only days ago, I read that Russian scientists grew a plant from a 30,000 years prehistoric seed found under the Siberian permafrost and now this. I thought 30,000 years was a long time, but this is a discovery of a forest that dates back 300 million years!

It's a shame that these extinct trees cannot be recreated in a lab. In 2007, however, they found a baby mammoth under the permafrost and scientists from Russia and Japan believe that they will be able to clone a mammoth by 2017.

www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

A forest from 300,000,000 years ago is so remote. But cloning a mammoth? That does sound exciting.

reply to post by AuranVector

It may be remote but i would think it is safer to investigate the forest than it would be to clone something.. if something is extinct.... maybe it was meant to be so.

Pretty interesting, it would be interesting to see if there is anything under the ash that might give us an insight into ancient peoples life.

Originally posted by TheGreatest
Pretty interesting, it would be interesting to see if there is anything under the ash that might give us an insight into ancient peoples life.

Human life from 300 million years ago? I believe in all kinds of "way out" ideas -- including that civilized human life may be as old as ten million years (based on Edgar Cayce readings).

But 300 million years? I'm not laughing though. What if they find evidence of an advanced lifeform we are not aware of? There is so much we really do not know.