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Antarctica Was Once Covered in Forests
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Quote:"They're actually some of the best-preserved fossil plants in the world," Gulbranson says. "The fungi in the wood itself were probably mineralized and turned into stone within a matter of weeks, in some cases probably while the tree was still alive. These things happened incredibly rapidly. You could have witnessed it firsthand if you were there."

The researchers found the prehistoric plants could transition rapidly between seasons, perhaps within the span of a month. Whereas modern plants take months to transition and conserve water differently depending on the time of day, the ancient trees could fluctuate quickly between pitch black winters and perpetually sunny summers.

Full article @ National Geographic


Quote:Gulbranson and his team are focused on an era centered around 252 million years ago, during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. During this event, as many of 95 percent of Earth's species died out. The extinction was probably driven by massive greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes, which raised the planet's temperatures to extreme levelsand caused the oceans to acidify, scientists have found. There are obvious parallels to contemporary climate change, Gulbranson said, which is less extreme but similarly driven by greenhouse gases.

Prior to the end-Permian mass extinction, the southern polar forests were dominated by one type of tree, those in the Glossopteris genus, Gulbranson told Live Science. These were behemoths that grew from 65 to 131 feet (20 to 40 meters) tall, with broad, flat leaves longer than a person's forearm, Gulbranson said. Before the Permian extinction, Glossopteris dominated the landscape below the 35th parallel south to the South Pole. (The 35th parallel south is a circle of latitude that crosses through two landmasses: the southern tip of South American and the southern tip of Australia.)

Full article @ Live Science
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