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23 million-year-old petrified mangrove forest discovered hiding in plain sight in Panama (www.livescience.com)
submitted 11 months ago by GreyShuck@feddit.uk to c/palaeontology@mander.xyz
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An ancient mangrove forest with trees that towered up to 130 feet high has been discovered over 20 million years after a volcanic mudflow smothered it in what is now Panama, a new study reveals.

Researchers first discovered the fossils in 2018 during a geological expedition on Barro Colorado Island (BCI). The island sits in Panama's human-made Gatun Lake, which thousands of ships cross every year as they cruise through the Panama Canal. BCI once formed part of a hilly landscape that became partly submerged in 1913, when engineers dammed the Chagres River to build the canal, and was set aside as a nature reserve in 1923. Today, the tropical forests of BCI are some of the most intensively studied in the world.

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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Paleontology, also spelled palaeontology[a] or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study their interactions with each other and their environments (their /c/paleoecology. Read more...

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