Dinos witnessed Oz bushfires that appeared 50mn yrs earlier than thought
February 16th, 2011 - 12:25 pm ICT by ANIMelbourne, Feb 16 (ANI): A new study has found that bushfires appeared in Australia more than 50 million years earlier than thought, which means that dinosaurs were witness to these events.
Using fossilised pollen and DNA extracted from gumleaves, Australian National University’s Mike Crisp and his colleagues deduced that fire probably contributed to transforming the prehistoric landscape from lush rainforest into dry eucalypt forest.
‘The DNA alone won’t put a timescale on it; you need fossils of known age. That’s where the pollen comes in,” the Age quoted Crisp as saying.
‘The trick is to work out where these fossils go on the evolutionary tree and when you’ve done that you can put the timeline on the tree and work out when things happened.’
The analysis of more than 100 pollen fossil samples led the team to believe that eucalypts developed the buds about 62 million years ago, dating the bushfire activity in Australia back to more than 60 million years ago.
‘It means you have two lines of evidence pointing to fire originating at that time,’ Crisp said.
‘One is to do with the anatomy of the eucalypts and their ability to re-sprout, and the other to do with the kinds of habitat they grew in. And the timing was the same for both.’
The study is published today in the journal Nature Communications. (ANI)
- Logging can make forests more flammable - Feb 14, 2010
- 55mn-yr-old horse fossils indicate 'you are what you eat' - Mar 04, 2011
- Amazon droughts alarm scientists - Feb 04, 2011
- Himachal's geo park to showcase fossils - Sep 11, 2011
- Reptiles were first animals to conquer dry land - Aug 01, 2010
- Fossilized fig wasp hasn't changed for over 34 million years - Jun 16, 2010
- Mammoth tree fossil to grace Himachal's second geo park - Mar 29, 2010
- Experts suggest ancient fossils 'not human ancestors but extinct cousins' - Feb 17, 2011
- Thriving rodent population in prehistoric Africa could shed light on human evolution - Dec 22, 2010
- Fossils, mineral rocks attract huge crowds at expo (With Images) - Jan 05, 2012
- Scientists name new dino species 'thunder thighs' - Feb 23, 2011
- 15 million year old fossils found in Outback - Jul 19, 2010
- Researchers map 'dinosaur tree' genome - Dec 22, 2009
- Early humans more promiscuous than modern-day people - Nov 04, 2010
- Ice age graveyard reveals ancient mysteries - Jan 24, 2011
Tags: 50 million, 60 million, anatomy, buds, bushfires, colleagues, dinosaurs, dna, eucalypt forest, evolutionary tree, fossil samples, fossils, journal nature, lush rainforest, mike crisp, million years, pollen, prehistoric landscape, timeline, timescale