Dr. Berry said that forests would also help gain insight into vegetation and landscape on the equator 380 million years ago.
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Both researchers believe the trees in this forest most likely grew originally in a basin about 5 km long and about 1 km wide, although only a few square meters of fossil remains can now be seen at the surface.
Berry said that they have discovered one of the first forests in a place that is used to preserve the planet’s plant diversity.
Although initially the appearance of large trees absorbed more of the sun’s radiation, eventually temperatures on Earth also dropped dramatically to levels very similar to those experienced today because of the reduction in atmospheric CO2.
John Marshall from Southampton University joined Chris Berry of Cardiff University in studying the tropical Arctic forest. And plants at the equator probably contributed the most, thanks to the high temperatures and rainfall levels of the region-plants like those fossilized in Svalbard.
Researchers have discovered fossils of a tropical forest in the Arctic, specifically in Svalbard, Norway.
Earth’s very first tropical forest in the Arctic existed 380 million years ago when the continents were still in different places and before the solid parts of the Earth as we know it today broke into tectonic plates.
The team found that the forests in Svalbard were formed mainly of lycopod trees, better known for growing millions of years later in coal swamps that eventually turned into coal deposits – such as those in South Wales. This forest was situated at least 30 degrees south of the equator during that time, with the discovered tree stumps belonging to various plant types.
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As per the researchers, the finding supports a theory that the rise of forests had brought a drop in carbon dioxide levels. “I have been working a lot on fossil trees from the Devonian by looking at the fragmentary fossils, and trying to assemble them back into whole plants”, Berry said. The cause for the drop in Carbon dioxide levels was due to change in vegetation from diminutive plants to the first large forest trees. Svalbard is now one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas with a population of around 2,500. Also, it is the home of the “Global Seed Vault”, an underground seed bank that contains a large range of seeds in case a huge crisis or tragedy results in the loss of the vegetation diversity on Earth. According to the detailed description published in the journal Geology on November 19, “lycopsids grew in wet soils in a localized, rapidly subsiding, short-lived basin” and would have been tightly packed, with gaps of about 0.7 feet (20 centimeters) between trees.
