FOS 128
Charcoal Trace Fossil
Location: Hyner, PA
Catskill Formation
Charcoal Trace Fossil
Location: Hyner, PA
Catskill Formation
As I tackle the steep red sides of a crumbling roadcut in the far backwoods of Pennsylvania, my geological hammer pries out mounds of fossilized plant material. These remains of some of the earliest pre-forests scatter the ground, having never seen the sun since they were buried some 360 million years ago in the late Devonian. This was a time marked when vertebrates were just emerging onto dry land, when forests began to take root, and when large predatory fish ruled the seas. Despite the temporal distance, there is much we can learn from this preserved foliage.
A fellow fossil enthusiast kindly donated this intriguing specimen to the Sholesonian, and at first glance, I believed I was looking at a collection of fish scales which were known to be very common at the collection site. This specimen, however, proved to hold a much more intriguing story. It's fossilized plant material, similar to the ones I had been collecting throughout the day, but this is a special kind known as fusain: fossilized charcoal. Now unlike coal which is fossilized organisms that have been geologically processed into rock that we currently burn for fuel, this is an ancient primitive forest that was burned down by a forest fire, and quickly buried afterwards to preserve the crispy remains of the blackened plants.
While it is hard to exactly piece together the full sequence of events, what probably happened was that, similar to modern forest fires, the area became too dry and when a rolling lightning storm ignited the dry plants only to be buried by a flash flood from a surge of water and debris from the Acadian Uplands. The burnt material was fossilized like shells and fish, until the outcrop was exposed some 360,000,000 years later. It's truly remarkable that such trace fossils exist, providing evidence of past forest fires and offers great insight into the ecological dynamics at play so long ago.
This specimen is located in the Sholesonian Fossil Collection and is currently off display. It was found at the Red Hill Site, in Hyner, PA, USA and was collected with permission and donated by an anonymous individual. FOS 128 belongs to the Duncannon Member of the Catskill Formation. It is one of hundreds of specimens found in the Sholesonian's massive collection of minerals, rocks, fossils, insects, shells, books, and artifacts.
While it is hard to exactly piece together the full sequence of events, what probably happened was that, similar to modern forest fires, the area became too dry and when a rolling lightning storm ignited the dry plants only to be buried by a flash flood from a surge of water and debris from the Acadian Uplands. The burnt material was fossilized like shells and fish, until the outcrop was exposed some 360,000,000 years later. It's truly remarkable that such trace fossils exist, providing evidence of past forest fires and offers great insight into the ecological dynamics at play so long ago.
This specimen is located in the Sholesonian Fossil Collection and is currently off display. It was found at the Red Hill Site, in Hyner, PA, USA and was collected with permission and donated by an anonymous individual. FOS 128 belongs to the Duncannon Member of the Catskill Formation. It is one of hundreds of specimens found in the Sholesonian's massive collection of minerals, rocks, fossils, insects, shells, books, and artifacts.
RSS Feed
