Hiker stumbles on previously-hidden, 280-million-year old ecosystem
The pre-dinosaur fossils, dating back to the Permian period, include footprints and tail marks from at least five species, plant impressions, wave ripples, and even raindrops.
Snow and ice are melting on the Alps at an alarming rate — in October, Reuters cited a report by monitoring body GLAMOS, which states if greenhouse gases continue to rise, the Alps glaciers could lose more than 80 per cent of their current mass by 2100.
This rapid melt is causing once-hidden artifacts to be revealed.
The most recent example is in the Italian Alps, where Claudia Steffensen spotted a strange formation resembling a footprint on a rock slab while hiking.
Researchers were alerted to the find and after numerous site visits, they discovered an entire ecosystem fossilized and hidden for 280 million years.
Particular from the fossiliferous stratifications. During orogeny alpine (or rather the training from the our mountains) these ancient lake beds have been raised and rotated, becoming almost vertical walls. (Elio Della Ferrera/University of Pavia)
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The pre-dinosaur fossils, dating back to the Permian period, include footprints and tail marks from at least five species, plant impressions, wave ripples, and even raindrops. These rare finds, recovered by helicopter, were revealed to the press on November 13.
It appears the fossils remained in tact because they used to reside close to water.
"The footprints were made when these sandstones and shales were still sand and mud-soaked in water at margins of rivers and lakes, which periodically, according to the seasons, dried up," Ausonio Ronchi, a paleontologist at the University of Pavia in Italy who examined the fossils, said in a translated statement.
"The summer sun, drying out those surfaces, hardened them to the point that the return of new water did not erase the footprints but, on the contrary, covered them with new clay, forming a protective layer."
Experts say these "incredible traces of life," made visible by the effects of climate change, come from another time in Earth's history when a warming climate changed the world, leading to a mass extinction known as the "Great Dying," which wiped out 90 per cent of Earth’s species.
A large boulder with tetrapod tracks (amphibians and reptiles, both walking on four legs) lined up to form “tracks”. (Elio Della Ferrera, Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of the provinces of Como, Lecco, Monza-Brianza, Pavia, Sondrio and Varese)
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During that period, climate change was caused by volcanic eruptions, but researchers say the event can show us what human-led warming could do to the environment.
"These fossils ... testify to a distant geological period, but with a tendency towards global warming completely analogous to that of today, with an increase in the greenhouse effect (then caused by immense volcanic eruptions), melting of the polar ice caps and development of highly seasonal and increasingly arid tropical environments, which at the time favored reptiles over amphibians and caused the extinction of many other animals," researchers on Evolution and Biodiversity in Berlin, said in a statement.
"The past has a lot to teach us about what we risk doing now, because of us, in the world."
Header image: Reconstruction of a probable scene that occurred 280 million years ago along the shore of a temporary lake. In the foreground (center and right) two large seymouriamorphs are walking, while in the water (left) an amphibian leaves traces of half-swimming; in the background three small reptiles are moving. Primitive conifers similar to araucarias (bottom right) and small and large horsetails (center and left) emerge from the mudflat. left). On the horizon rise mountains much older than the Alps and a volcano. Drawing by Fabio Manucci. Caption: University of Pavia.
