{"id":197797,"date":"2026-07-27T07:23:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T12:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newslink360.space\/?p=197797"},"modified":"2026-07-27T07:23:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T12:53:33","slug":"a-piece-of-europe-5-km-down-heated-to-240c-and-later-returned-to-the-surface-how-fossilised-wood-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newslink360.space\/?p=197797","title":{"rendered":"A piece of Europe 5 km down, heated to 240\u00b0C and later returned to the surface. How? Fossilised wood shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"e9jwa\">\n<div class=\"vdo_embedd\">\n<div class=\"GfdvZ\">\n<section class=\"_bIDB  clearfix id-r-component leadmedia undefined undefined  E9tg9 \" style=\"top:0px\">\n<div class=\"_bIDB\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">\n<div class=\"ypVvZ\">\n<div class=\"WGttI\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-132659257,imgsize-1080740,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/how-fossilised-wood-shows-the-history-of-europe.jpg\" alt=\"A piece of Europe 5 km down, heated to 240\u00b0C and later returned to the surface. How? Fossilised wood shows\" title=\"How Fossilised wood shows the history of Europe\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"Ta7d_ img_cptn\"><span title=\"How Fossilised wood shows the history of Europe\">How Fossilised wood shows the history of Europe<\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Imagine you are holding a piece of fossilized wood. It might, at first sight, seem to be nothing more than a well-preserved relic of some ancient forest. But within its crystalline framework is a geological diary, quietly recording the rise and fall of continents, extreme underground temperatures and the dramatic shuffles of Earth&#8217;s crust, all over hundreds of millions of years.<!-- --> In a groundbreaking discovery scientists have learned that fossilized wood can preserve much more than the remains of ancient trees, it can tell us the remarkable geological history of an entire region. According to media reports, evidence has been uncovered by a new study led by geologist Dr Steffen Tr\u00fcmper from the University of M\u00fcnster that parts of what is now central Europe had been buried as deep as 5.5 kilometres beneath Earth&#8217;s surface, where temperatures reached 240\u00b0C (464\u00b0F), before slowly rising back to the surface over millions of years. <!-- -->The findings, published in Scientific Reports, provide fossilized wood as a powerful new tool for understanding Earth\u2019s ancient past.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"6\"\/><\/p>\n<h2>Trees that borne saw Europe<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"8\"\/>The study was based on fossilized tree trunks discovered in the Kyffh\u00e4user mountains in northern Thuringia, Germany. Some of these trunks are up to 20 metres (66 feet) long and have been known to scientists since at least the 18th century. The area wasn\u2019t like modern Europe about 300 million years ago. It was located in the supercontinent Pangaea near the equator, in a tropical, seasonally dry climate, where tropical dry forests flourished.<!-- --> These giant conifer-like trees grew up by ancient rivers and were then buried by floods under reddish sediments known as fluvial redbeds. According to the report, these deposits subsequently became a part of the Saale Basin, one of the oldest geological basins of the Central European Basin System.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"14\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h2>All about the secret<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"16\"\/><\/p>\n<div data-pos=\"0\" class=\"id-r-component iIpbx undefined  &#10;        \">\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Silica-rich groundwater seeped into the buried trunks\" msid=\"132659305\" width=\"\" title=\"Silica-rich groundwater seeped into the buried trunks\" placeholdersrc=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/83033472.cms\" imgsize=\"\" resizemode=\"4\" offsetvertical=\"0\" placeholdermsid=\"47529300\" type=\"thumb\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/msid-132659305\/silica-rich-groundwater-seeped-into-the-buried-trunks.jpg\" data-api-prerender=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Silica-rich groundwater seeped into the buried trunks<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"18\"\/>It\u2019s not the wood itself that makes these fossils so special, but the quartz that slowly replaced the wood in the process of fossilization. The trees died, and the silica-rich groundwater seeped into the buried trunks. Over millions of years this silica crystallized into quartz, preserving even the microscopic details of the original wood, and creating a permanent geological record. Rather than forming in one sudden event, they found the quartz formed in five different stages, each one representing a different chapter in the geological history of the region.<!-- --> Each layer recorded key data on the temperature, pressure and chemical composition of the underground fluids present when it formed.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"22\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h2>The journey of 5 kilometers under the Earth<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"24\"\/>By studying the quartz, scientists could construct a stunning 200-million-year timeline stretching from the late Carboniferous to the Early Cretaceous period. Including later uplift of the rocks, the record covers nearly 300 million years. One of the most extraordinary findings was that some of the fossilized wood had been buried 3 to 5.5 kilometers (1.9\u20133.4 miles) below the surface. <!-- -->Temperatures there varied from 160\u00b0C to 240\u00b0C (320\u00b0F\u2013464\u00b0F).<!-- --> And it has been reported that instead of destroying the fossils, these extreme conditions were recorded forever in tiny quartz crystals, capturing evidence of burial, heating, and the region\u2019s eventual return to the surface.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"30\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h2>How did the researchers find it all<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"32\"\/><\/p>\n<div data-pos=\"0\" class=\"id-r-component iIpbx undefined  &#10;        \">\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The journey of 5 kilometers under the Earth\" msid=\"132659347\" width=\"\" title=\"The journey of 5 kilometers under the Earth\" placeholdersrc=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/83033472.cms\" imgsize=\"\" resizemode=\"4\" offsetvertical=\"0\" placeholdermsid=\"47529300\" type=\"thumb\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/msid-132659347\/the-journey-of-5-kilometers-under-the-earth.jpg\" data-api-prerender=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The journey of 5 kilometers under the Earth<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"34\"\/>According to the study, researchers used a combination of high-tech scientific techniques including quartz cathodoluminescence, Raman thermometry, oxygen and silicon isotope analysis, scanning electron microscopy, electron-probe microanalysis, fluid inclusion studies and in situ U-Pb dating to unlock this ancient archive. <!-- -->One of the most telling clues were microscopic fluid inclusions, tiny bubbles of fluid trapped inside the growing quartz crystals millions of years ago.<!-- --> These small pockets collected samples of the ancient fluids that once flowed underground, providing scientists a means of determining the exact temperatures and pressures at the time each layer of quartz formed.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"39\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h2>A new window into the past<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"41\"\/>&#8220;The discovery changes the way scientists view fossilized wood,&#8221; Dr Tr\u00fcmper says. What was once considered mainly a record of ancient plant life can now be a geological archive that can document tectonic movements, basin subsidence, heating events and continental evolution over enormous time scales. This is the longest known sequence of successive stages of wood mineralization ever discovered, and it makes fossilized wood a new, important resource for Earth scientists, researchers say.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"43\"\/>Images Courtesy: University of M\u00fcnster and istock<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"45\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/science\/a-piece-of-europe-5-km-down-heated-to-240c-and-later-returned-to-the-surface-how-fossilised-wood-shows\/articleshow\/132659297.cms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Fossilised wood shows the history of Europe Imagine you are holding a piece of fossilized wood. It might, at first sight, seem to be nothing more than a well-preserved relic of some ancient forest. But within its crystalline framework is a geological diary, quietly recording the rise and fall of continents, extreme underground temperatures&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/newslink360.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785156813_photo.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":198336,"url":"https:\/\/newslink360.space\/?p=198336","url_meta":{"origin":197797,"position":0},"title":"A 66-million-year-old dinosaur highway in Bolivia reveals more than 16,000 fossil footprints from the final days of the dinosaurs |","author":"Ajay Kumar Verma","date":"July 29, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Millions of years before roads connected modern cities, dinosaurs were already following well-worn routes across ancient landscapes. A remarkable fossil site in central Bolivia has preserved this prehistoric movement in extraordinary detail. 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See the full list","author":"Ajay Kumar Verma","date":"July 25, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"homelatest newsautocarFrom America to Bhutan, how much ethanol is being mixed in petrol? KnowLast Updated:July 14, 2026, 17:18 ISTIndia has made a big achievement in ethanol blending by implementing E20, but do you know that E100 i.e. pure ethanol is also used in Brazil? 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