News Earth

They’re not briquettes, but they’ll do

By Sid Perkins

- More than 2 years ago

Centimeter-size chunks of charcoal (red arrows) appear in the same layer of sediment as an unburned branch of Archaeopteris (yellow arrow). Cressler

The microscopic cell structure of the charcoal (bottom image) matches that of Rhacophyton, an ancient fern. Cressler

Chunks of 360-million-year-old fossil charcoal found in sediments in north-central Pennsylvania provide the earliest evidence yet that wildfires swept ancient landscapes.