World Before The Dinosaurs: Fires Were Common On Earth 300 Million Years Ago

A team of researchers discovered that extreme wildfires were very common on the earth between 300 and 250 million years ago, before the dinosaurs. This fiery world existed due to increasingly high levels of oxygen in the atmosphere, according to a study at the Royal Holloway University of London.

"We have been able to show that wildfire was an important element in Earth System many hundreds of millions of years before the arrival of humans," said Professor Andrew Scott, a lead author of the study from Royal Holloway, in a news release. "High oxygen levels in the atmosphere at this time has been proposed for some time and may be why there were giant insects and arthropods at this time."

The researchers found that high levels of charcoal could be evidence that there were high levels of fire activity 300 million years ago. The researchers used information from charcoal in coal to determine their hypothesis.

The presence of mass fires were likely due to elevated levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. High concentrations of oxygen along with existing vegetation would resulted in increasing fire activities. The researchers examined environmental and ecological factors, which may have been potential sources to fire activities, and they concluded that high oxygen levels in the atmosphere had the highest impact in promoting fires during that period.

"Our research indicates that there was a significant impact on the prevalence and scale of wildfires across the globe and this would have affected not only the ecology of the plants and animals but also their evolution," said Scott.

This study was published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

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