January 28, 2025
3 Pain read
Pristine ancient forests found frozen in time on rocky mountains
A patch of ice melted on rocky mountains found an ancient forest and these trees have stories to tell dynamic landscapes and climate change
Long-frozen Zurbark pines are created to a yellowstone regional ice patch.
Daniel Stahne, Montana State University
The melting of ice in the rocky mountains has saved an amazing forest, frozen for thousands of years in time.
Beartooth PlateauWhat is located at a height of more than 10,000 meters (3,000 meters) is a wild landscape. But it’s not like that; An old forest is under the ice layers.
The temperature of cooling about 5,500 years ago quickly brought this Whitbark Pine (Pinus Albicaulis) The forest is free to preserve the condition of the trees in almost perfect. Now, ice patches melt in the millennium Climate changeIn addition, researchers are finding clues about what this ancient landscape was like once and how it was saved. Discoveries were determined 30 December 2024, 2024, in the magazine Food.
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“No one had any idea that these ice patches were about thousands of years” David McwethyThe head teacher of the Department of Earthly Sciences and Early Study of the University of Montana, direct science said. “Things were significantly different than what they do today.”
This forest of old pine pines has risen for centuries than the same tree species that can be found in the region today. This is because the global climate has passed in a warm period The end of the last ice ageAbout 10,000 years ago, and WhiteBark pine killed more than 5,000 years ago.
This high height forest was an active ecosystem, the animals are likely to hunt and humans. From the same ice patch, Craig LeeThe collaborating author of Montana State University and the research author, has recovered a wooden focus for 10,000 years. This wooden focus was part of a spear used to hunt humans.
In the margins of a Beardoth Plateau ice patch, a forest is frozen in time
Joe McConnell, Desert Research Institute
“We don’t think about how dynamic the alpine ecosystem was used in time: people were using animals” Cathy WhitlockThe director of the MSU Paleoecology Labor and the main author of the research told them to live science. “You go there and it’s beautiful – it’s a very dramatic landscape, but it’s a little bit.”
It is likely that the tree said to gradually cool the climate at the end of the climate at the end of the climate, McWhety said. Shortly after dying the trees, a series of volcanic eruptions took out Ash and other materials to the atmosphere, which led to more cooling. This volcanic cooling It was violent enough that the ice was surrounded by the trees quickly and preserved it until the day.
The mountain rock melting patches revealed the trees “like the trees that you would see in a wind zone,” said Mcehyk – he lack his skin, but otherwise pristina. So far the ice patch is never melted, so the ice has worsen the trees.
The frozen forest emerging is not something I’ve heard before ” Philip MoteHe did not participate in this study by Professor at the University of State in Oregon, but has been studying the snow conditions in the United States for almost 25 years. “I’m sure all kinds of things buried under ice.”
Climate change promoted by human activity has accelerated Heating high discharge sites As the Beartooth plateau. As more ice patches melt, there is potential to find out more about the past, but whitlock said these findings are delicious.
“These types of discoveries are scientifically interesting, but these alpine alpine are sad memories that are fragile with climate change,” whitlock said.
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