Researchers first discovered the fossils in 2018 during a geological expedition.
On an island in central Panama, a vast mangrove forest once thrived, until it was buried in the ash of a violent volcanic eruption 22 million years ago.
Scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute discovered the fossilized remains of trees that once covered an area of ​​Barro Colorado Island.
Researchers first discovered the fossils in 2018 during a geological expedition.
“We never imagined we would find petrified wood in Barro Colorado, given the numerous scientists who have explored the island over the last century. But no one had mentioned them,” study co-author Carlos Jaramillo, a geologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, told Live Science.
He explained that despite their appearance, the fossils are surprisingly preserved.
This is because the volcanic eruption that buried the trees about 23 million years ago slowed their decay.
“Petrified wood samples store a large amount of information,” lead study author Camila MartÃnez Aguillon, a paleoecologist at EAFIT University in Colombia, told Live Science.
The cellular structure has mineralized over the centuries and remains intact, offering researchers a rare opportunity to travel back in time, according to Aghillon.
The researchers examined 121 samples of petrified wood exposed in a small stream and found that 50 of them belonged to a previously unknown species, which they named Sonneratioxylon barrocoloradoensis.
The newly discovered fossil species resemble mangrove trees that grow in Southeast Asia today.
According to the study published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, the trees of the ancient forest were much taller than modern mangroves. While most mangrove trees reach a height of about 13 meters, S. barrocoloradoensis was about 25 meters tall and could reach up to 40 meters.
The ancient trees probably developed the same survival strategies that mangroves use today, preferring brackish water to the highly saline ocean waters, Jaramillo estimates.
The forest flanked a narrow peninsula that connected present-day central Panama to North America before the Isthmus of Panama formed – 23 to 3 million years ago.
SOURCE: Live Science- PHOTO CHRISTIAN ZIEGLER
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