Scientists have recently discovered evidence of a 66-million-year-old wildfire in Saskatchewan, Canada, at a time when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. For the first time, the research group discovered fossilized plant life that points to a prehistoric forest fire, providing scientists with clues about Earth’s ancient climate. The study findings were reported in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.
Researchers from McGill University and Royal Saskatchewan Museum conducted an expedition to Saskatchewan, where upon they identified a fossil-record that provides insight into forest fire ecology, and the regrowth of vegetation in the aftermath of fire. The team excavated plant fossils preserved in rocks that had been laid down when the dinosaurs were on the brink of extinction. The rock deposits, therefore, represent a time capsule from the Late Cretaceous, just before the dinosaurs were wiped out.
The fossilized plants were found stacked on top of layers of ancient charcoal, and reveal what the Cretaceous forests looked like before and after the ancient fire. The scientists looked at these fossilized remains and compared them to another deposit, collected from a location where no fire disturbance had been detected, in the valley of Chambery Coulee.
At the region where the fire struck, the team discovered that the plant ecology of ancient forests recovered in much the same way as it does on Earth today. The common flowering plant Alder (Alnus) was one of the first plants to emerge during the early stages of the recovery period, as were the deciduous trees Birch and Sassafras. However, sequoia and ginkgo were present in more mature forests that had been untouched by fire, as demonstrated by the fossils extracted from Chambery Coulee.
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Aside from plant recovery, the researchers also inferred the climatic conditions from the preserved stone. Emily Bamforth of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum claims her team’s research shows the mean annual temperature in the region was between 10 and 12 degrees Celsius higher than today’s temperature, along with around six times more rainfall.
In a press release, Hans Larsson, the Canada Research Chair in Macroevolution at McGill University, recently said that further investigation was required before the region’s ancient biodiversity and ecology could be more fully understood:
“We won’t be able to fully understand the extinction dynamics until we understand what normal ecological processes were going on in the background.”