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Palaeobotany

Forests frozen in time

Nature volume 447, pages 786–787 (2007)Cite this article

Just over 300 million years ago, a forest was dropped below sea level by an earthquake and swiftly buried. Such rapid events provide snapshots of lost ecosystems, sometimes on a huge spatial scale.

Fossil plants preserve a vast amount of information about ancient ecosystems and climates. But much of this information is difficult to retrieve because plants fall apart both during life and after death, and many extinct groups are still poorly described because not all of their organs are known. However, the rooted nature of plants means that vegetation can be buried in place, preserving spatial and ecological information that could never be retrieved for mobile organisms.

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Figure 1: In the mire.

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  1. Kirk R. Johnson is at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 2001 Colorado Boulevard, Denver, Colorado 80205, USA. kirk.johnson@dmns.org,

    Kirk R. Johnson

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  1. Kirk R. Johnson
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Johnson, K. Forests frozen in time. Nature 447, 786–787 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/447786a

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