ARCHITECTURE
IDEAS
CABINS
Wild Woodz 
CATEGORIES
POPULAR
Nature Animals
People Craft
Science Design
Jump to WildWoodz
Glass tabletops are the best option for renewing existing coffee tables while round tabletops and rectangle-glass-tabletops are perfect for decorating ...
Modern Coffee Table Styles with Table Tops
Glass tabletops are the best option for renewing existing coffee tables while round tabletops and rectangle-glass-tabletops are perfect for decorating ...
Plexiglass is a great alternative to glass. Let's explore the applications in which plexiglass is preferred over ordinary glass.
Top 5 Situations When Application of Plexiglass is Preferred over Glass
Plexiglass is a great alternative to glass. Let's explore the applications in which plexiglass is preferred over ordinary glass.
Interior designs for homes and other spaces are changing faster than one can imagine. Sometimes, it gets too difficult to ...
Difference Between wooden base cabinets & glass cabinets (New Concept Glass Cabinets Design)
Interior designs for homes and other spaces are changing faster than one can imagine. Sometimes, it gets too difficult to ...
Scandinavian design is normally compared to mid-century modern design. While they are known to borrow details from each other, color ...
DIY Nordic wood designs
Scandinavian design is normally compared to mid-century modern design. While they are known to borrow details from each other, color ...
For the love of woodz, craft and nature.
 
Share
Petrified Tree Shows Scars From Prehistoric Wildfires
In Nature by Anja, March 12, 2016

If a tree survives a fire, scars are left in the bark and these scars can eventually be covered up as time goes on. However, the rings of a tree always reveal the truth about getting burned earlier in life.

While these fire scars can be readily identified in trees that lived and were felled recently, they had not been observed in prehistoric trees until Bruce Byers noticed the scars on a piece of petrified wood owned by his father. The full description will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, and Byers presented his research in Sacramento at the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting.

Interestignly, there are benefits to the occasional forest fire. Fires clear brush and debris, removing competition of water and nutrients, allowing new plants and wildlife to come in and thrive.

Fire can also eradicate disease, and is even necessary to germinate seeds in some tree species

While humans have been responsible for about 88% of all wildfires over the last decade, nature has been starting fires with lightning, falling rocks, volcanos, or just through spontaneous combustion for about 400 million years. The evidence of those fires have been seen in charcoal, but never before in petrified wood.

Petrified tree shows scars from prehistoric wildfires

“Petrified log“

Cleo Byers, Bruce’s father, retrieved a piece of petrified wood while on a hike with his kids 28 years ago in Utah, where it was legal to obtain such 7 kg (16 lb) memento. The tree, which lived 210 million years ago in the late triassic, served as a doorstop for Cleo’s office where he researched nuclear physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Bruce Byers, who is a fire ecology consultant, recently recognized that this piece of petrified wood had some clues that could have indicated it experienced a fire.

Surprisingly, prehistoric trees and modern trees appear to respond to fire in a very similar manner

When a tree with rings gets a fire scar, the rings are more narrowly spaced for a time, and new growth can be seen curling and growing around it. Trees like Agathoxylon arizonicum, which is likely the species of the petrified wood, do not form rings. Instead, cells in the xylem of the tree that help deliver water, grew smaller when exposed to fire. However, after the tree had healed, the cells appeared larger than before, presumably because of the new abundance of water and nutrients from decreased competition.

Understanding more about how ancient trees responded to wildfire could help answer questions about plant evolution, particularly about the onset of flowering plants during the Cretaceous. Fires may have freed up nutrients and provided conditions necessary for angiosperms to emerge.

Article cover photo:
“Polished slice of petrified wood“ by  Daniel Schwen is licensed under CC BY 3.0

H/T to LiveScience; iflscience

Reshare our content with appropriate credit:
- via Woodz.co (must include a link to the article)
- if it exists, give h/t (specified at the end of our articles)

Leave a Reply

So, what do you think?

avatar
wpdiscuz_captcharefresh
avatar
wpdiscuz_captcharefresh
  Subscribe  
Notify of
Latest
Sustainability, respect for the mountains and direct contact with nature are the principles that have guided all design choices. For ...
9 Dec 2021
Hotel Zallinger
Glass tabletops are the best option for renewing existing coffee tables while round tabletops and rectangle-glass-tabletops are perfect for decorating ...
27 May 2021
Modern Coffee Table Styles with Table Tops
With great views of the golf course and the magnificent trees in the environment. The design of the project follows ...
6 May 2021
GP House
Plexiglass is a great alternative to glass. Let's explore the applications in which plexiglass is preferred over ordinary glass.
12 Apr 2021
Top 5 Situations When Application of Plexiglass is Preferred over Glass
The steep forested hillsides around the Hardangerfjord above Odda is the location of two Woodnest treehouses. The architecture is a ...
3 Feb 2021
Woodnest Cabin – Treehouse
RELATED POSTS
Following the widespread criticism, the Brazilian government revised the decree and prohibited mining in indigenous and conservation areas.
Government Amazon Mining Decree Blocked by Federal Court
On the East Coast of China nestled in the mouth of the Yangtze River, sits an ancient little fishing village ...
An Old And Long Forgotten Fishing Village Is Being Reclaimed By The Nature Surrounding It
Around the world, outdoor air pollution causes 3.3 million premature deaths a year, predominantly in Asia, according to a new ...
Air Pollution Kills More Than 3 Million People A Year
Architecture Wild Woodz About Us
Ideas Terms & Privacy
Cabins Contact
For the love of wood, craft and nature.
Copyright © 2015-2023 Woodz. All Rights Reserved.