China copper smelters plan to cut output after margins fall
The output cuts underscore the industry’s struggle with a shortage of feedstocks caused by recent mine production setbacks.
Chinese coal miners discovered a botanical Pompeii, a 298 million year old forest well-preserved in ash from a sudden volcanic eruption.
University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn announced the discovery this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Unlike coal, that is formed from peat bogs that are pressurized over eons, the blanket of ash froze the fauna in time.
“It’s marvelously preserved,” Pfefferkorn told Penn News. “We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That’s really exciting.”
Some of the specimens observed were Noeggerathiales, an extinct spore-bearing tree that is related to ferns. The scientists identified six groups of trees, some as high as 80 feet. The site is near Wuda, China.
During this time in earth’s history, the climate was tropical and similar to the temperatures found in present day. The earth looked a lot different since the continents were grouped much more closely around the equator
Pfefferkorn likened the finding to Pompeii. He says that it doesn’t provide deep understanding of that era. Rather, the finding is a time capsule, a glimpse of time that helps elucidate what happened before and what came after.
Image is a reconstruction of the ancient forest from University of Pennsylvania
4 Comments
Lbonde
Now what ? Are the Chinese going to try to reproduce any plants they also may have found ? The Russians announced yesterday they had grown a dormant plant they found that was thousands of years old.
Please do a follow up on this incredible story. Thank you, Michael
Lewis
http://www.miningpublications.com
Guest
send me a seed to plant please!
i want one of those new trees!
OBI WAN WOTAN
You want stories, I’ll give you a story. A bush said to me, go take that wonderful desert land and consider it my gift to you as you are my chosen people. Never mind that it is a desert and you will suffer droughts and famines – I am special and you are special and there is nothing else you need to know, except that I created everything a couple thousand years ago, never mind what you see with your eyes and calculate with your brain.
Ckckhcdc
Why you took out three other researcher names in your writing? Scientific American, Penn News, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences all mentioned other researchers. Scientific American even said the the research is led by Jun Wang.