[HN Gopher] Unearthing the oldest forest on Earth
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Unearthing the oldest forest on Earth
Author : dnetesn
Score : 79 points
Date : 2024-02-29 15:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worldsensorium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldsensorium.com)
| mannykannot wrote:
| When I was passing through the area a couple of years ago, I took
| a side-trip to view the fossils - the persons in charge of the
| property were willing to let me onto the site.
|
| I doubt this is likely to encourage a great many people to make
| this trip, but just in case it does, and this would be unwelcome,
| I won't disclose the exact location.
| gausswho wrote:
| It's quite a bit farther north but Isle La Motte in the
| Champlain Islands has two quarry sites turned into state parks
| where you can wander over fossil beds for hours. I really
| enjoyed visiting. Sounds like these are from nearly the same
| epoch.
| naikrovek wrote:
| So you commented to tell us that you won't comment?
| echelon wrote:
| The geoguesser guy would have it figured out in no time flat,
| anyway.
|
| I have to imagine that sort of skill is highly valuable and
| that intelligence services are training more to be just like
| him.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Indeed - I figured it out from photographs of the site and
| a large free online mapping service, and I am nowhere as
| good at this sort of thing as that guy. What I'm saying is
| that you can go see it if you are not too far away and put
| a bit of effort into it.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Reminds me of the secret "Land of the Lost" "valley of the
| dinosaurs" found in Australia with the living fossil tree the
| "Wollemi Pine".
|
| It's a valley which was sort of cut off from the rest of the
| world.
|
| The location is kept secret.
|
| "The Lost Valley of the Wollemi Pine"
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/the-lost-...
| adolph wrote:
| _I felt an electric shock when I realized the size of it -- 43
| feet in circumference and 16 feet across._
|
| This is an interesting measure. A circle with diameter of 16
| would have a circumference of 50. For an ellipse with a wide
| dimension of 16, the short dimension would be 11.2 to have a
| circumference of 43. I wonder why the tree grew in such an odd
| shape. Was it double-trunked? The image references were broken
| when I accessed the article.
|
| The Wayback Machine has a low resolution photo. Looks like it
| might have a trunk split way up there?
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160205052143/https://blogs.sci...
| randcraw wrote:
| This reminds me of a visit to the Burgess Shale back around 1982.
| It just happened to rain during our visit (not unusual in British
| Columbia, I'm sure), bringing the Shale's myriad fossils into
| high relief. We were visibly _surrounded_ by thousands of half
| billion year old critters. Unforgettable.
| randcraw wrote:
| Is there a directory of old growth forests in North America
| somewhere? I'd love to visit a few and visually compare them to
| more familiar forests assumed to be mature and wild, but actually
| are undergoing secession given the extensive deforestation here
| over the past 500 years. What does a forest of mature oaks really
| look like?
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