According to the study, Antarctica was engulfed in flames during the Cretaceous period.

Antarctica was troubled by frequent forest fires, directly related to active volcanic eruptions at the end of the age of dinosaurs, 75 million years ago.

Paleontologists have received new evidence of this event from paleontological specimens collected on King George Island, in the Shetland Islands, on the Antarctic Peninsula, during scientific expeditions led by the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH) and the Brazilian Antarctic Program (Proantar).

The first evidence of the emergence forest fire V Antarctica This was already confirmed by the same researcher in 2015 in an article published in the journal Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology. In 2021, another study for Antarctica he also provided more evidence on the subject.

However, new data presented in a study conducted by Dr. Joselyn Manfroti and her collaborators during her postdoctoral fellowship at the Chilean Antarctic Institute shows that Antarctica really burned in the Cretaceous period, and the occurrence forest fire it was often. And these episodes fires They were associated with the active volcanism of that time.

The new work has been published in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science.

real natural laboratory

According to the authors of the study, global environmental change is one of the biggest challenges for understanding humanity. In this sense, the construction of scenarios that facilitate the understanding of the ecological evolution of the most diverse environments of the globe is of paramount importance.

“And this design goes beyond the current signs of environmental disturbances, but attention also needs to be paid to studies that represent a wider time scale. Thus, characterizing and understanding the Earth’s past environment, the paleoenvironment and its disturbing agents (such as fire) are fundamental tools for building scenarios and models that allow a better understanding of Earth dynamics and help preserve the existing biota,” explains Manfroy.

continent AntarcticaSince it is considered a continent of extremes, it is one of the environments that is increasingly of research interest for a better understanding. In addition to being the continent that currently presents the most unfavorable conditions for the development of terrestrial biodiversity due to its hostile abiotic factors (such as significant cold and wind intensity), it is also the continent that best preserves its ecological characteristics. a real natural laboratory, meeting exceptional conditions for the development of research in the field of fundamental and applied sciences, which makes it especially interesting from a human point of view.

Although the Antarctic continent is now a large, isolated land mass in the southern hemisphere, it has not always been in this geographic position. Through geological epochs, it has moved and changed due to constant tectonic movements, occupying various positions on the globe throughout its paleogeographic history. Throughout this history, the environment of the South has changed significantly.

In remote times, they were dominated by a wide variety of species that constituted and/or inhabited large forests that left their traces in the paleobotanical record preserved in various geological contexts. Antarcticawith an emphasis on Cretaceous deposits.

In the Cretaceous period, as in our days, forest fire they were very common molding elements in the terrestrial environment. In addition to being considered one of the important factors of environmental disturbance in various biomes, fires past vegetation is evidenced, in particular, by the presence of fossilized carbon resulting from the process of carbonization, which consists in the incomplete combustion of plant fragments preserved in the geological record. Various factors affect the occurrence, frequency and intensity fires in ecosystems from seasonal weather, the presence of plant material (fuel), humidity, forms and causes of ignition.

Reconstruction of the paleoecological scenario

Thanks to this study, it became known that the southern environment during the Cretaceous period was also disturbed by the appearance forest firemuch more often than previously thought, which partially or completely absorbed vegetation.

Analysis of these fragments of charred plant fossils recovered from Cretaceous deposits in Antarcticaespecially found on King George’s Island, not only allowed the characterization of burnt vegetation, mainly consisting of plants known as gymnosperms.

It also made it possible to diagnose the elements involved in the ignition of vegetation, allowing the reconstruction of an easily understood paleoecological scenario.

“Intense volcanism, attested in the Cretaceous period, which includes most of the rock layers Antarcticawas also a promoter forest fire happened during the same period. molten lava flows of active volcanism that engulfed vegetation, but the vegetation’s contact with heated ash clouds, pyroclastic clouds that were expelled by volcanoes, which are preserved in the geological record through very fine volcanic deposits such as volcanic tuffs. These heated ash clouds reached the forests, setting off natural plant fires,” says Manfroy.

(According to Europa Press)

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