Abstract:
In a latest study, a team of paleontologists and geologists successfully restored an "ancient Pompeii" site that was perfectly sealed due to an ancient volcanic eruption. This prehistoric disaster that occurred about 22 million years ago buried a lush ancient forest and ecosystem intact underground in a very short period of time, providing unprecedented three-dimensional fossil samples for human exploration of the earth's ecology at the intersection of the Early and Miocene epochs.
Researchers pointed out that the formation mechanism of the site is highly similar to the destruction of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. At that time, the sudden volcanic eruption released a large amount of high-temperature volcanic ash and pyroclastic flows, which instantly engulfed and sealed the entire terrestrial ecosystem within several square kilometers of the surrounding area. Due to the extremely high burial rate and anoxic environment, volcanic ash not only completely preserved the trunks, root systems and leaf shapes of large trees, but even tiny plant pollen, traces of insect activity, and microscopic fungi and moss structures attached to the trunks were transformed into fossils intact.
Using high-resolution three-dimensional CT scanning and isotope dating technology, the research team reconstructed the three-dimensional spatial distribution pattern of this ancient forest 22 million years ago. Analysis shows that the area was in a subtropical climate zone with suitable temperature and humidity, with well-proportioned forests and extremely high ecological diversity. Fossil samples also retain a large number of traces of plant gnawing by insects and microscopic evidence of microbial decomposition processes. This allows scientists to rarely directly observe the details of the dynamic interaction between animals and plants and their environment tens of millions of years ago, instead of just relying on scattered bones or fragments to speculate.
This discovery provides valuable basic data for studying ancient global climate evolution and how ecosystems responded to environmental changes. Scientists involved in the study said that this kind of "instantaneous storage" fossil site is extremely rare in the history of the earth. It not only breaks the fragmentation limitation of traditional fossil records on the time scale, but is also like a detailed snapshot of prehistoric ecology, intuitively showing to modern people the prosperity of life on earth tens of millions of years ago.
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