Dominican amber is estimated to be 15–20 million years old, spanning the Early to early Middle Miocene. The researchers excluded preservation in younger copal because the included plant tissue is partly replaced by minerals, probably pyrite. This was a comparative study based on macromorphology.

Investigators manually ground and polished the amber, then examined it with dissecting and compound microscopes. Photographs were assembled from 8 to 34 focal planes. The fossil was described using established terminology and compared with published descriptions and herbarium specimens representing living Selaginella species from the West Indies.

The preserved shoot was once branched, with branches measuring 12 and 8.8 mm. Its vegetative leaves, or trophophylls, were dimorphic. Dorsal trophophylls measured 0.80–0.98 by 0.2–0.32 mm and were ovate and symmetric, with rounded bases, slightly keeled surfaces, aristate tips and minutely serrated margins.

The dorsal leaves had aristae measuring 0.27–0.35 mm, approximately one-third of leaf length, and margins bearing scattered teeth or cilia. Ventral trophophylls measured 1.20–1.45 by 0.45–0.62 mm. They were elliptic, with rounded, slightly asymmetric bases and apiculate tips.

Rhizophores, axillary trophophylls, strobili, spores and the leaf epidermis were not preserved. Despite these limitations, the combination of leaf shape, symmetry, apex form, auricles and the placement of marginal features distinguished the fossil from 10 living Greater Antillean species included in the comparison. Specific differences separated the fossil from S. heterodonta, which has broadly ovate dorsal trophophylls with cilia around the margin, and S. armata, which has broadly ovate, asymmetric ventral trophophylls.

Further distinctions in leaf-base symmetry, apex form and marginal cilia and teeth separated it from S. confusa, S. phiara, S. tenella, S. cordifolia, S. consimilis, S. urquiolae and S. flabellum. Although the fossil lacks reproductive structures, its anisophyllous vegetative shoot placed it within the rhizophoric clade of Selaginella. Its preservation was insufficient for confident assignment to the subgenera Ericetorum, Exaltatae, Gymnogynum, Lepidophyllae or Stachygynandrum.

The shoot also excluded the selaginella clade, whose members have isophyllous shoots, and subgenus Rupestrae, whose members have helically arranged vegetative leaves. Plant, fungal and lichen inclusions in Dominican amber have previously been associated with diverse Miocene Caribbean forest communities, including epiphytic habitats. Terrestrial and epilithic life forms are the most common among Selaginella species, although some species grow on tree trunks or other plants.

On this basis, the authors considered S. jorelisiae most likely a member of the herbaceous layer, potentially growing on cliffs, boulders, soil banks, mossy rocks or leaf litter. They could not exclude an epiphytic occurrence. The single incomplete specimen therefore documents Selaginellaceae in Greater Antillean humid forests during the Miocene, while leaving its subgeneric placement and precise ecological setting unresolved.

Subject of Research: Description and morphological comparison of a Miocene Selaginella fossil from Dominican amber

Article Title: First record of Selaginella from Miocene amber

Article References: López-García, A. G., Schmidt, A. R., Serguera, M., & Regalado, L. (2025). First record of Selaginella from Miocene amber. Fossil Record, 28(1), 57-66. https://doi.org/10.3897/fr.28.138310

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/fr.28.138310

Keywords: Selaginella, spike moss, Miocene, Dominican amber, fossil plant, macrofossil, paleobotany, Greater Antilles, morphology, First, record, amber

The Phyletisches Museum, founded by the celebrated and controversial zoologist Ernst Hachekel, who laid its cornerstone in 1907, houses some 750,000 specimens. Its paleontological holdings exceed 30,000 objects, and among them were long-known amber pieces containing scientifically precious inclusions such as early strepsipterans. The rediscovered collection, however, was something else entirely: a small, chaotic assemblage whose labels pointed mostly to the Samland Peninsula on the Baltic coast, with a few pieces marked as East African copal and dozens carrying no provenance information whatsoever.

That ambiguity mattered enormously. Amber and copal, a younger, semi-fossilized resin, can look nearly identical to the eye, yet the difference in age can span tens of millions of years. A piece labeled Baltic amber is roughly 40 million years old; East African copal is typically centuries to a few millennia old, and so-called defaunation resin, resin collected from living forests, can be younger than 250 years. If the Jena pieces really were Eocene amber, several ant inclusions would have represented sensational first fossil records of widespread genera such as Dorylus, Crematogaster, Pheidole, and Lepisiota, dramatically extending the evolutionary timelines of entire lineages.

The research team, led by Brendon Boudinot and colleagues, refused to take the labels at face value. They first subjected the pieces to the classic qualitative tests recommended for distinguishing amber from copal: checking whether the material floats in saltwater, examining fluorescence under ultraviolet light, scratching it, and burning tiny samples to observe whether it melts or burns. The results were baffling and contradictory. Every piece floated exactly as its label predicted, yet not a single piece glowed the characteristic blue under ultraviolet light, and the burn tests failed to separate the two resin types cleanly.

The decisive evidence came from quantitative methods. Samples were sent to the International Amber Association in Gdansk, Poland, for Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy, a technique that reads the chemical fingerprint of the resin. The results overturned the labels entirely: every pale yellow piece, including those containing the supposedly Eocene ants, turned out to be copal, while the darker, orange pieces were genuine Baltic succinite. Radiocarbon dating sealed the case. A piece containing driver ants of the genus Dorylus yielded an age of roughly 145 years, squarely within defaunation resin, while a piece containing a barklouse dated to about 390 years. Neither was remotely Eocene.

The biological evidence told the same story. Synchrotron-radiation micro-computed tomography, performed at the German Electron Synchrotron facility in Hamburg, allowed the team to reconstruct the trapped insects in exquisite three-dimensional detail. The Dorylus specimens proved identifiable as Dorylus nigricans molestus, an extant subspecies of army ant known from East Africa today, previously recorded from confirmed East African copal. A synincluded platypodine beetle was identified as Doliopygus cf. serratus, another living species restricted to Africa. In contrast, the dark amber pieces yielded genuinely ancient treasures, including the extinct ant Yantaromyrmex geinitzi, a species endemic to Baltic amber.

The investigation also yielded genuine novelties. From a piece of copal dated to roughly 390 years old, the team described Amphientomum knorrei, a new species of scaled barklouse in the family Amphientomidae, named in honor of the museum’s longtime curator and historian Diedrich von Knorre. Because the species is preserved in copal rather than true amber, it may still be alive in East Africa today. To capture this possibility, the authors introduced a novel taxonomic convention: a double dagger symbol to denote species known only from copal or defaunation resin, distinguishing them from the single dagger used for true amber fossils that are certainly extinct.

From a piece of genuine Baltic amber came a second new species, Baltistena nigrispinata, a tumbling flower beetle of the family Mordellidae distinguished by striking black combs of scale-like setae on its hind legs. The team also designated a neotype for the ant Pheidole cordata, a name that has vexed systematists since 1829, anchoring the long-ambiguous species to a radiocarbon-dated copal specimen from the collection. Beyond the new species, the study delivered sweeping taxonomic housekeeping: dozens of poorly preserved ant fossils were transferred out of the genus Camponotus into form genera such as Camponotites and the newly erected Eocamponotus and Incertogaster, precisely so that unreliable names cannot be misused as calibration points in evolutionary analyses.

Historical detective work traced the collection’s likely path into the museum. Handwriting analysis and archival testimony point to Ernst Haeckel’s successor era and, more specifically, to Ernst Uhlmann, a preparator and later director of the museum who kept a small amber collection and bequeathed it to von Knorre, who in turn deposited it in the museum’s holdings. An original invoice from the Prussian mining company operating the amber works in Koenigsberg, dated to the window between 1923 and 1929, anchors at least one purchase to the interwar period, when roughly 500 tons of amber were harvested annually from the Samland Peninsula.

The broader lesson resonates far beyond one German attic. As the authors emphasize, qualitative tests long recommended for identifying amber fail spectacularly when benchmarked against quantitative methods such as infrared spectroscopy, and label data alone can never substitute for chemical and biological verification. With an ever-growing flood of amber fossils, particularly from Cretaceous Burmese amber, feeding into phylogenetic and macroevolutionary studies, mislabeled material can silently distort evolutionary timelines. At the same time, the team argues, the young resins should not be dismissed: copal and defaunation resin preserve snapshots of recent biodiversity and may offer a final, urgent window on ecological communities now being lost to deforestation and climate change. The rediscovered collection, now sorted into defaunation resin, copal, and true Baltic amber, stands as both a scientific resource and a cautionary tale about the quiet power of a museum label.

Subject of Research: Provenance analysis and taxonomic revision of a rediscovered amber and copal collection from the Phyletisches Museum Jena

Article Title:  Et latet et lucet : Discoveries from the Phyletisches Museum amber and copal collection in Jena, Germany

Article References: Boudinot, B. E., Bock, B. L., Weingardt, M., Tröger, D., Batelka, J., LI, D., Richter, A., Pohl, H., Moosdorf, O. T. D., Jandausch, K., Hammel, J. U., & Beutel, R. G. (2024). Et latet et lucet: Discoveries from the Phyletisches Museum amber and copal collection in Jena, Germany. Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift, 71(1), 111-176. https://doi.org/10.3897/dez.71.112433

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/dez.71.112433

Keywords: amber, copal, Phyletisches Museum Jena, fossil insects, infrared spectroscopy, radiocarbon dating, micro-computed tomography, new species, Formicidae, Psocodea, Baltic amber, taxonomic revision

Pseudoscorpions are small terrestrial arachnids, typically measuring between 2 and 8 millimeters in body length, characterized by enlarged pincer-like pedipalps and the complete absence of the metasomal tail and sting that define true scorpions. Despite their scorpion-like appearance, they occupy a wide spectrum of terrestrial habitats, where they function primarily as predators of small arthropods. Many species exhibit phoretic dispersal, attaching themselves to larger insects or vertebrates to hitchhike to new environments. As one of the oldest terrestrial arachnid lineages, pseudoscorpions have a fossil history extending all the way back to the Middle Devonian, with the earliest known species, Dracochela deprehendor, discovered near Gilboa, New York, and dating to approximately 392 million years ago.

Yet the fossil record of the order remains strikingly sparse. Aside from that Devonian pioneer and a single compression fossil from Triassic deposits of Ukraine dating to roughly 227 million years ago, the documented fossil pseudoscorpions are limited to the Cretaceous and the Cenozoic. Most described fossil species originate from European Eocene ambers, including Baltic, Bitterfeld, and Rovno amber, which together account for more than 49 species, as well as from Miocene deposits with at least eight described species. In total, only 64 fossil species representing 23 genera and a single fossil family have been documented, a stark contrast to the extant diversity of 26 families and more than 4,350 species. This disparity highlights a strong preservational bias against Mesozoic representatives and underscores substantial gaps in our understanding of early pseudoscorpion evolution.

Mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber from Kachin State in northern Myanmar, dated to approximately 99 million years ago, has emerged in recent decades as one of the most important sources for fossil pseudoscorpions. Produced by the resin of ancient coniferous trees, this deposit preserves organisms in exceptional three-dimensional detail, including delicate cuticular structures and sensory organs that would normally be lost in conventional compression fossils. Although Burmese amber has yielded a comparatively diverse assemblage of pseudoscorpion inclusions, only a small fraction has been formally described. Currently, 14 species in 12 genera have been recorded from this deposit, demonstrating that many diagnostic features of modern pseudoscorpions, including specialized pedipalps and sensory structures, were already established at the family and sometimes genus level by the Cretaceous.

Chernetidae Menge, 1855 is among the most speciose families within Pseudoscorpiones, comprising 746 described species in 122 genera. Assigned to the suborder Iocheirata, the family is defined by the presence of a venom apparatus in the movable finger of the chela, a proximal raised slit sensillum on the leg tarsi, and typically at least one accessory tooth on the chelal finger. While some chernetids possess lateral eyes, most lack eyes or eyespots entirely. The family exhibits substantial ecological and behavioral diversity, including frequent phoresy, bark- and nest-dwelling habits, and complex reproductive strategies with marked sexual dimorphism in some taxa. Despite this diversity and broad geographic distribution, the taxonomy of Chernetidae remains preliminary, with three subfamilies currently recognized and no complete molecular phylogenies available for the family.

The fossil record of Chernetidae was, until now, extremely limited. The oldest known occurrence was an undescribed deutonymph from Campanian Canadian amber at Grassy Lake in southern Alberta, dating to between 79 and 78.2 million years ago. Although confidently assignable to Chernetidae, its juvenile status precluded detailed comparison using adult diagnostic characters. Adult representatives were otherwise known only from the Eocene genus Oligochernes and additional undescribed material from Bitterfeld and Rovno ambers, as well as from Miocene Chiapas and Dominican ambers. Notably, no formally described member of Chernetidae had been reported from Burmese amber, despite indications of an undescribed representative. This absence was unexpected given the family’s modern diversity, leading researchers to hypothesize that Chernetidae had already diversified by the mid-Cretaceous and that their principal diagnostic character, the venom apparatus on the movable chelal finger, was established well before the Campanian.

The new fossil, an adult female preserved in Burmese amber from the Hukawng Valley, was acquired in 2016 by private collector Patrick Müller and has now been permanently deposited at the Museum of Nature Hamburg in Germany. The specimen was examined using a combination of high-resolution photography with a Canon EOS 7D Mark II camera and specialized macroscopic and microscopic lenses, with images layered into high-resolution composites using Zerene Stacker software. Measurements were taken with a LEICA M205 A microscope, and the amber specimen was additionally examined using micro-computed tomography at the imaging beamline P05 of PETRA III at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg. Although suboptimal scan quality prevented detailed segmentation within the resulting three-dimensional model, the combined imaging approaches allowed comprehensive morphological documentation of the fossil’s diagnostic features.

Burmachernes cenomanium exhibits the principal synapomorphy of Chernetidae, namely venom glands in the movable chelal finger, but is distinguished from all 121 extant genera as well as the Eocene fossil genus Oligochernes by a unique combination of characters. These include a distinctive trichobothrial arrangement on the chelal fingers, with eight trichobothria on the fixed finger and two on the movable finger, a specific pattern of chelal teeth with at least three accessory teeth on the fixed finger, six setae on the dorsum of the cheliceral palm, a rallum with two blades, and a carapace nearly as wide as long with two deep transverse furrows. The body measures 4.11 millimeters including the chelicerae, with long and slender pedipalps and legs. All tergites and sternites are divided, tergal setae are slightly clavate and arranged in a single row, and the last tergite bears longer tactile setae. External female genitalia are visible and covered with at least 17 fine setae, confirming the specimen’s adult status and sex.

The syninclusions preserved alongside the new chernetid comprise a much smaller pseudoscorpion belonging to the family Chthoniidae, previously described as Lechytia finniae, as well as insect larvae and a member of Zygentoma, the silverfish order. This assemblage implies a litter-related environment, suggesting that the resin trapped a community of organisms living in or near forest floor debris. The co-occurrence of multiple pseudoscorpion families within a single amber piece provides rare direct evidence of ancient pseudoscorpion community structure and ecological partitioning in a mid-Cretaceous forest ecosystem, reinforcing the value of Burmese amber as a window into Mesozoic terrestrial arthropod communities.

Comparisons with other fossil chernetids highlight the morphological distinctiveness of Burmachernes. Compared to the Eocene Oligochernes species from Baltic amber, the new genus exhibits a proportionally longer prosoma, different positions of transverse carapacial furrows, and a different arrangement of chelal trichobothria, with trichobothrium ist positioned nearer to isb than to it, whereas in Oligochernes ist lies closer to it. Burmachernes also possesses tactile setae on the tarsi, a feature absent in Oligochernes. Comparisons with Dominican and Mexican Chiapas amber chernetids from approximately 16 million years ago reveal differences in cheliceral setation, carapace shape, rallum blade number, and the relative position of the tactile seta on tarsus IV. Taken together, these comparisons indicate that Burmachernes exhibits a combination of characters not seen in any previously described fossil chernetid, representing a distinct lineage that expands the morphological diversity of the family into the mid-Cretaceous.

The remarkably modern appearance of Burmachernes provides critical evidence that the characteristic chernetid phenotype, including the venom tooth on the movable chelal finger, was already fully in place by the Cenomanian. Interestingly, the fossil exhibits no novel morphological characters exclusive to chernetids; instead, its designation as a new genus reflects a distinctive combination of traits rather than any entirely new structures. This morphological stasis mirrors patterns observed in other pseudoscorpion lineages preserved in Burmese amber, including Chthonioidea, Neobisioidea, Cheiridioidea, and Feaelloidea, suggesting that early-established body plans were maintained over tens of millions of years. The fossil’s age provides direct support for molecular phylogenetic estimates by Benavides and colleagues, who inferred the emergence of Chernetidae between the Late Jurassic and Late Cretaceous, with the highest likelihood in the Early Cretaceous, suggesting that the characteristic chernetid morphology was likely established even earlier, possibly during the Jurassic.

The discovery also strengthens the fossil record of the superfamily Cheliferoidea, which encompasses the most derived pseudoscorpions, including Atemnidae, Cheliferidae, Withiidae, and Chernetidae. To date, Cheliferidae was the only Cheliferoidea family formally documented from Burmese amber, represented by Echinochelifer curvatus. The presence of both Cheliferidae and Chernetidae in the mid-Cretaceous demonstrates that Cheliferoidea had already diversified into extant family-level lineages by the Upper Cretaceous, indicating that even the most derived pseudoscorpion clade had established recognizable family-level diversity more than 99 million years ago. Burmachernes cenomanium not only extends the minimum age of Chernetidae by approximately 20 million years but also provides direct evidence that the apparent paucity of mid-Cretaceous chernetid fossils reflects preservational and taxonomic limitations rather than a delayed evolutionary emergence, underscoring the deep evolutionary roots and morphological stability of modern pseudoscorpion lineages.

Subject of Research: First fossil of the pseudoscorpion family Chernetidae Menge, 1855 ( Arachnida , Pseudoscorpiones ) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber

Article Title: First fossil of the pseudoscorpion family Chernetidae Menge, 1855 ( Arachnida , Pseudoscorpiones ) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber

Article References: Willmott, L. A., Kotthoff, U., & Harms, D. (2026). First fossil of the pseudoscorpion family Chernetidae Menge, 1855 (Arachnida, Pseudoscorpiones) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber. Evolutionary Systematics, 10(1), 101-111. https://doi.org/10.3897/evolsyst.10.190572

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/evolsyst.10.190572

Keywords: First, fossil, pseudoscorpion, family, Chernetidae, Menge, Arachnida, Pseudoscorpiones, mid-Cretaceous, Burmese, amber, scientific research

The story begins with a sediment core recovered from the Amundsen Sea during an expedition of the research icebreaker Polarstern. In 2020, the same international team, led by marine geologist Dr Johann Klages of the Alfred Wegener Institute, stunned the scientific community when they announced in the journal Nature that the core contained an extraordinarily well-preserved forest soil dating back roughly 90 million years, complete with abundant pollen, spores and a dense network of fossil roots. During the Cretaceous, tectonic conditions placed this temperate rainforest even farther south than the drill site itself, a mere 900 kilometres from the geographic South Pole. Today, average annual temperatures at that location hover around minus 30 degrees Celsius, and the entire region lies beneath an ice sheet several kilometres thick.

The climate that supported such a forest was shaped by greenhouse conditions unlike anything in the recent geological past. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during the warmest interval of the Cretaceous were four to six times higher than preindustrial modern levels, and the average annual temperature in the West Antarctic rainforest reached around 12 degrees Celsius, roughly two degrees warmer than present-day Germany. Rainfall was plentiful but strongly seasonal: dry periods regularly gave way to monsoon-like rainy seasons. For about four months of each year, the forest endured the continuous darkness of the polar night, yet conifers and tree ferns thrived, and dinosaurs roamed through the misty swamplands. It was this combination of warmth, abundant moisture and pronounced seasonality that set the stage for the fires the team has now documented.

In the new study, the researchers re-examined the same core using a broader suite of analytical methods, and the evidence of fire proved unmistakable. Throughout the Late Cretaceous section of the sediment sequence, the team identified microscopic charcoal particles, the diagnostic residue of vegetation burned in situ or transported short distances by water and wind. Critically, the abundance of these charcoal particles increased steadily in the younger sediments, indicating that fires became more frequent as the ecosystem evolved. The particles themselves carried chemical and structural signatures showing that the fuel was mainly soft conifer wood burned at relatively low temperatures, a pattern typical of surface fires that creep through undergrowth and ground litter without climbing into the forest canopy.

Fire left its mark in more than charcoal. The sediments also yielded amber, the fossilised form of tree resin, appearing in a configuration that suggests the resin flowed over fire-damaged areas of tree trunks and hardened into a protective seal, much as living conifers today exude resin to wall off wounds. Together, the charcoal and amber record a forest that was burned and healed, burned and healed again, over an extended stretch of Late Cretaceous time. Because volcanically active areas lay at least 400 kilometres away from the site during that period, the researchers conclude that the most plausible ignition source was not lava or volcanic ash flows but lightning strikes from thunderstorms, a conclusion consistent with the strongly seasonal, storm-prone climate inferred from the broader sedimentological and palaeontological evidence.

Perhaps the most consequential discovery in the core concerns what grew back after the fires. The sediments contain countless spores of peat moss of the genus Sphagnum, the same group of plants that dominates raised bogs across the modern Northern Hemisphere. These spores provide evidence of some of the earliest raised bogs known, and their rise was closely intertwined with the recurrence of fire. According to the scenario the researchers developed from their data, the temperate and very swampy Antarctic rainforest, with its alternating dry and monsoon seasons, gradually silted up and transitioned into a peatland dominated by peat mosses. Wildfires, growing ever more frequent, played a decisive role in that transition by keeping the vegetation open, preventing the re-establishment of dense forest, and creating the conditions under which waterlogged, moss-dominated ground could persist and expand.

Once the peat bog had formed, fire did not disappear from the system. Instead, it changed character. Ground-level smouldering fires occurred repeatedly within the peat itself, burning slowly through damp, carbon-rich material rather than racing through standing forest. Co-first author Prof. Dr Ulrich Salzmann of Northumbria University draws a direct line from that ancient process to the present day, noting that such smouldering ground fires resemble those that have become increasingly common in German peatlands in recent years, where prolonged drought has lowered water tables and left once-saturated peat vulnerable to slow, persistent combustion. The Antarctic core thus preserves a complete natural experiment in how fire, hydrology and vegetation interact during the birth and maturation of a peatland, conducted under greenhouse conditions far warmer than today’s.

The climate significance of that experiment is difficult to overstate. Peatlands are among the most effective long-term carbon stores on Earth, accumulating partially decomposed plant material over thousands to millions of years because waterlogged conditions slow decay to a crawl. Co-first author Prof. Dr Thorsten Bauersachs of RWTH Aachen University emphasises that peatlands played a key role in the climate system then as now, precisely because of this capacity to lock away carbon over long periods. Paradoxically, the Cretaceous record suggests that in a warm climate, where wetlands dry out more quickly and fires that suppress forest development occur more frequently, conditions can actually favour the formation of new peatlands, allowing carbon-rich plant matter to accumulate even as the world warms. Fire, in other words, was not merely a destructive force in this ancient ecosystem but an architect of one of the planet’s most durable carbon sinks.

For the research team, the parallels between the Cretaceous Antarctic and today’s high latitudes were among the most surprising findings of the study. Dr Johann Klages, co-first author of the paper, describes the team’s astonishment at finding evidence in the core of an early Antarctic ecosystem that, in many respects, resembled today’s Arctic raised bogs and also experienced regular fires. Modern raised bogs in Arctic and boreal regions face acute threats from climate change and increasing drought, and the fate of the carbon they store is a major uncertainty in projections of future warming. The West Antarctic record demonstrates that peat formation and fire can coexist and even reinforce one another under greenhouse conditions, but it also shows how sensitive these systems are to the balance between moisture and burning, a balance that human-driven warming is now shifting across the northern peatlands.

The study also underscores how much remains hidden beneath the Antarctic ice. A single sediment core, drilled through the seafloor of the Amengen Sea region, has now yielded a rainforest soil, a fire history and the trace of the earliest polar peatlands, all from a time when the South Pole itself was green. As analytical methods grow more sensitive, existing cores continue to surrender new secrets, and each one refines the picture of how Earth’s most extreme greenhouse intervals functioned. Ninety million years ago, lightning-lit fires crackled through swampy conifer forests under a polar night, and from those ashes rose the bogs that would bury carbon for geological time. Understanding that ancient dance between flame and moss may prove essential to anticipating what a warming world will do to the peatlands that still guard vast reservoirs of carbon today.

Subject of Research: Cretaceous wildfires and early Sphagnum peatland formation near the South Pole

Article Title: Evidence of ancient wildfires near the South Pole

Article References: Evidence of ancient wildfires near the South Pole. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Antarctica, wildfires, Cretaceous, peatlands, Sphagnum, paleoclimate, charcoal, amber, carbon storage, West Antarctica, sediment core, climate change