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SACRAMENTO , Calif. — After serve nearly 30 years as a doorstopper for a atomic physicist , a lump of petrified wood from Arizona has finally been recognized as a one - of - a - variety find . The 210 - million - year - sure-enough musical composition of wood contain the first ossified attack scar ever come upon , researchers report here this workweek at the Ecological Society of America ’s one-year coming together .
Evidence forancient woodland firespredates the dinosaur , but the clues occur from charcoal gray , not from stigma on fossilized trees . Charcoal remains of Earth ’s oldest flaming see back more than 400 million days . No one has ever pick out a fire scar on petrified wood before , suppose lead sketch writer Bruce Byers , a natural resources consultant from Falls Church , Virginia . That ’s because the scientists who meditate petrified Grant Wood rarely interbreed route with timberland ardor researchers , Byers suspects . But Byers recall more fossil fire scars will be receive .
This rosy-pink chunk of petrified wood from Utah’s Chinle Formation is the oldest-known fire-scarred fossil.
" reckon patterns in nature credibly requires a genial hunting image for those radiation pattern , " Byers said . " Disciplinary division may be a barrier for sharing those patterns , but I think if people originate looking , they will see those patterns . " [ See pic of the First Fire - Scarred Petrified Wood ]
Fire Harlan F. Stone
Byers spent two decades staring at his father ’s 16 - Cypriot pound ( 7 kg ) doorstop before realizing it might be from a fire - scarred Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree . His Church Father , Cleo Byers , was a nuclear physicist for Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico , and take his fry on cost increase throughout the Southwest , Bruce Byers said . The blushful - pinkish Harlan Fisk Stone come home with father and Logos 28 years ago , after a hiking trip near Utah ’s Bears Ears Buttes . The colourful clump was collect on interior forest nation , where it ’s sound to takepetrified woodby permit , according to Byers , who has detail the storyon his web log . The petrified chunk in all probability came from the Chinle Formation , the same woodwind - rich rock layer that litters Arizona ’s Petrified Forest National Park with immense , crystallize tree . [ photo of Arizona ’s Amazing Petrified Forest ]
Decades by and by , Bruce Byers took on a contract to help fire ecology researchers in Colorado ’s Front Range .
" I study to recognize the distinctive patterns of modern attack scars , and I learn how important fervor scars are in remodel the fire chronicle of modern forest , " Byers recalls .
Afterward , on Byers ' next visit to his parents ' New Mexico home , the telltale signs of a fire cicatrice jumped out from the familiar piece of petrified wood .
A fire - wound tree diagram valorously tries to heal itself . The surviving Grant Wood hugs the flame mark , turn back over the altogether , burned inner wood . The healing curls of Natalie Wood leave a unparalleled pattern of growth rays as they load around the trunk .
Byers ' petrified wood had the healing curls . When the piece was cut and polished , he could also see a unclouded - colored band part the pre- and post - fire growth , a mark that is also find in modern trees , as well as the alone development - light beam design .
Collecting clues
With networking and dusty calls , Byers put together a pipe dream team that could aid him polish his findings and publish the resolution in a scientific journal . The discipline will come along Oct. 1 in the daybook Palaeogeography , Palaeoclimatology , Palaeoecology . His collaborators include the University of New Mexico ’s Sidney Ash , who may have look at more petrified wood from the Southwest than anyone else on Earth ; Dan Chaney , an expert on ancient plants at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History ; and Lucía DeSoto , a professor at Portugal ’s University of Coimbra and a leader in analyzing tree increase , cell by jail cell .
One of the squad ’s fundamental findings was that the petrified tree seemed to respond to fervour tension in the same elbow room as modern trees . emphasis from woods firescan leave behind banding of minute tree ring in some modern tree , a result of the struggle to retrieve and grow . The ancient tree was a species calledAgathoxylon arizonicum , a species that never form growth rings . However , its microscopical Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree cells , called tracheids — internal highway that transmit water and nutrients — show sign of fire stress in a manner similar to tree gang . Six to eight row of midget tracheids propose suppressed ontogeny forthwith after the fire , the researcher report . The next rows are self-aggrandizing than prefire tracheid , likely because the woodland firing ’s survivors had less competition for water and nutrient , Byers said . This post - fire growth jet is also meet in innovative trees .
Rethinking the past tense
If more grounds for fervor damage turn up in ancient wood , will ecologists reconsider the impact of fire on flora development ? Inthe Cretaceous Period , between 120 million and 65 million eld ago , researchers now think wildfires facilitate trigger the development ofthe first flowering plants .
No one knows for sure what the Chinle Formation ’s trees look like , but some researchers think they resembled scallywag teaser tree , the evergreen conifers from Chile that swing their lower branches until only an umbrella - shaped top stiff . That ’s a classical fervidness adaptation ( so ground fires ca n’t mount up lower arm ) , Byers points out .
" I think fire has been a selective military unit in forest since way , way back , " he tell .
