Hungarian scientists have discovered a group of fossilised swamp cypress trees preserved from 8 million years ago which could provide clues about the climate of pre-historic times.
Instead of petrifying — turning to stone — the wood of 16 Taxodium trees got preserved in an open-cast coal mine and geologists studied samples as if they were sections cut from a piece of living wood.
“The importance of the findings is that so many trees got preserved in their original position in one place,” Alfred Dulai, a geologist said. “But the real rarity about these trees is that... their original wood got preserved and they did not turn into stone.”
The trees, which stand 4-6 meters tall and 1.5-3 meters in diameter, were found when miners started to remove a deep layer of sand at a mine in the north-eastern village of Bukkabrany to get at deposits of lignite.
The trees date back to the late Miocene geological period at a time when the Carpathian basin
was a freshwater lake surrounded by swamps.
clipped from: www.dailyexhumation.com 