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from the really-Really-REALLY-old-growth-forests dept.
During Antarctica's summer, from late November through January, UW-Milwaukee geologists Erik Gulbranson and John Isbell climbed the McIntyre Promontory's frozen slopes in the Transantarctic Mountains. High above the ice fields, they combed the mountain's gray rocks for fossils from the continent's green, forested past.
By the trip's end, the geologists had found fossil fragments of 13 trees. The discovered fossils reveal that the trees are over 260 million years old, meaning that this forest grew at the end of the Permian Period, before the first dinosaurs, when Antarctica was still at the South Pole.
...
The time frame is exactly what they are looking for. The Permian Period ended 251 million years ago in history's greatest mass extinction, as the Earth rapidly shifted from icehouse to greenhouse conditions. More than 90 percent of species on Earth disappeared, including the polar forests. Gulbranson believes that the trees in the Antarctic forests were an extremely hearty species and is trying to determine why they went extinct.
The Antarctic forests went extinct because the Elder Things carelessly switched to electric vehicles and short-circuited the greenhouse effect that their internal combustion engines had created. Duh.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday November 10 2017, @08:49AM (2 children)
Hmmm, wouldn't that mean the forest grew 10 million years BEFORE the end of the Premian?
So the trees grew fine in "icehouse" conditions, and then some 10 million years later the earth warned up to "greenhouse" conditions, and the trees all died and fossilized.
All this time the continent was at the same place it is now, so subject to pretty much the same relative conditions - no sun for 6months and cold all the time. Yet apparently not so cold as today, because the trees actually grew somehow.
Yet it warms up just a skosh, and the trees die.
Very confusing write-up.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @05:05PM (1 child)
Not really at all.
The Permian period was really, really long. Literally just Google 'Permian period' and you'll see it was nearly 50 million years long. Being within 10 million years of the end of it is actually near the end, in geologic time.
And yes, that's basically exactly what happened to kill these trees off. Turns out dramatic change in conditions can be fatal, warming or cooling.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday November 11 2017, @05:38AM
We are talking about Antarctica, which was then, as now, at the South Pole. Yet you see no problem with trees growing there?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.