Posted by Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow

The discovery of more fossilised forests in Illinois coal mines is providing insights into the impacts of global warming on ecosystems.

Last year, Katherine Sanderson reported in Nature News on the discovery, reported by Howard Falcon-Lang from Bristol University and colleagues. The fossil forests were originally noticed by maintenance workers, working in the passages where the coal had been mined. The coal would have formed from soil that lay beneath the tropical forests. Now that the coal is gone, the roofs of these passages show the bottom of the forests: tree roots, leaf litter from the forest floor, and tree trunks.

Since then, the researchers have been searching different mines in the area. Now they have found fossil forests in 15 different mines in the area, including one that covers 100 square kilometres, Falcon-Lang said in a press conference today.

The discovery includes different layers of forest from different time periods spanning a total of two million years, during which time (approximately 306 million years ago) the climate went through a significant warming. And with this shift in climate, a shift in vegetation is evident in the fossilised remains.

Before the warming, these areas were covered in lush rainforests, similar to the modern day Amazon. The warming took place “almost overnight in a geological sense” according to Falcon-Lang, after which, the fossil record changes, showing a shift to a forest dominated by weedy ferns.

This shows that there was a threshold which tips the balance and unravels the whole system, says Falcon-Lang. The forests provide an ancient case study of climate change, which the researchers are now comparing to records of ancient carbon dioxide levels, hoping to learn more about what we might expect as our modern day climate changes.

Posted by Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow

The discovery of more fossilised forests in Illinois coal mines is providing insights into the impacts of global warming on ecosystems.

Last year, Katherine Sanderson reported in Nature News on the discovery, reported by Howard Falcon-Lang from Bristol University and colleagues. The fossil forests were originally noticed by maintenance workers, working in the passages where the coal had been mined. The coal would have formed from soil that lay beneath the tropical forests. Now that the coal is gone, the roofs of these passages show the bottom of the forests: tree roots, leaf litter from the forest floor, and tree trunks.

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