Forest destroyed 22 million years ago, rediscovered

04 Jan,2024

News Excerpt:

Researchers have rediscovered a 22-million-year-old mangrove forest that was swept away by a massive volcanic eruption.

About the Findings:

The forest that once thrived with huge trees and lush green grasses on an island in the Panama Canal fell prey to natural disasters that triggered complete destruction.
The rediscovery was made by the scientists, who found the fossilised remains of trees on the Barro Colorado Island.

The fossils indicated that some huge volcanic eruptions triggered a lahar, eventually sweeping the entire forest land.

A lahar is a violent water flow with mud, ash, and rocks.
It almost flows like wet concrete at lightning speeds that can instantly cover an area into a whirlwind.
It leaves plants and animals with no opportunity to rot or decompose and instantly destroys the entire land.
It comes with silica-rich waters that seep deep into living matter and expunge their tissues, which results in well-preserved fossils locked in a moment in time.

Origin of the rediscovered mangrove forest:

As per the scientists, this old mangrove forest would have originated in the early Miocene Epoch, which existed about 23 million years ago.
The great land masses of South America and the Caribbean plate collided with each other, forming the landscape of Panama and the rest of Central America.
This was when the hill that would eventually become Barro Colorado Island rose from the ocean.

Around its edges grew a mangrove forest, whose trees rose as high as 130 feet, mainly because -

Sediment samples show that the forest grew in the brackish zone where salty and fresh waters meet, ideal conditions for mangroves.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were much higher during the Miocene than now - over 500 parts per million (ppm) compared to about 419 ppm today.

The findings of the study will be published in the March 2024 issue of the Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology journal.
These ancient remains revealed a lot about the forgone forest but the study is still in its incipient stage.

Barro Colorado Island:

It is a heavily forested patch of land rising up out of the waters of Gatun Lake, situated at the northern end of the Panama Canal.
In the early 1900s, the area of Panama, now known as Barro Colorado Island, was a big hill called West Hill, located in the Chagres River Valley.

Natural events, such as volcanic activity or tectonic plate movement, did not form it. Instead, human activities are responsible for the island’s creation.

In 1914, engineers who were working on the Panama Canal constructed a dam to block the Chagres River’s outflow.

The dam changed how the river flowed and caused water to rise in the Chagres River Valley.

New lakes, like Gatun Lake, were created in the process, and entire towns, forested areas, and farmlands were flooded.
As the water rose, the lower portions of West Hill were covered by water, and the top part of the hill became an island — Barro Colorado Island.

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