Mummified Forest (Axel Heiberg Island)

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Mummified tree stump on the Geodetic Hills of Axel Heiberg Island

The mummified forest on Axel Heiberg Island , Canada, is a forest of fossil tree stumps .

In 1985 helicopter pilot Paul Tudge noticed a series of fossil tree stumps while flying over the Geodetic Hills in the eastern region of Canada's Axel Heiberg Island, and at almost the same time geologist Brian David Ricketts reported on these 40 to 50 million year old fossils from the Eocene . The tree remains - including individual sequoia stumps about 50 cm high and one meter thick ( Metasequoia glyptostroboides ) - were not petrified as usual , but mummified (i.e. combustible); Although the wood had been exposed to the pressure of sediments, the cell structures that had grown were only slightly changed and not soaked in mineral salts as in petrification processes.

The mummified forest consisted essentially of water spruce ( Glyptostrobus ) and sequoia trees (especially of the species Metasequoia glyptostroboides , English dawn redwood ), which on the Axel-Heiberg Island reached a height of about 50 meters and an age of 1000 years, as is evident through Counting the annual rings proved.

The resin remains preserved in the wood and in the cones of this in situ preserved fossil forest are of particular scientific interest . The age and chemical composition of the samples investigated since the early 1990s indicate that some of these fossil resins go back to the genus Pseudolarix (golden larch) and that these resins in particular are chemically very similar to Baltic amber . Since then, a probably extinct species of the genus Pseudolarix has been viewed as a possible botanical source of Baltic amber, the origin of which cannot be determined with certainty due to its multiple rearrangements, including plant fossils within its found layers (mainly " blue earth ").

literature

  • JK Stager and Harry Swain: Canada North . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1992, pp. 123ff., ISBN 0-8135-1891-1
  • Ansgar Walk: North flight . Pendragon Verlag, Bielefeld, 2000, pp. 77-83, ISBN 3-929096-95-1

Web links

Commons : Mummified Forest  - Album containing pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ken B. Anderson and Ben A. LePage: Analysis of Fossil Resins from Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic. In: ACS Symposim Series 617, Washington, DC, 1995

Coordinates: 79 ° 55 ′ 0 ″  N , 88 ° 58 ′ 0 ″  W.