Dubbed the “Pompeii of the Permian period” in a study published this week by University of Pennsylvania palaeobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn and colleagues, the fossilised forest lends insight into the ecology and climate of its time.

The study site, located near Wuda in China, is unique as it gives a snapshot of a moment in time.

Because volcanic ash covered a large expanse of forest in the course of only a few days, the plants were preserved as they fell, in many cases in the exact locations where they grew.

Due to nearby coal mining activities unearthing large tracts of rock, the size of the researchers’ study plots is also unusual.

They were able to examine a total of 1000sq.m of the ash layer in three different sites located near one another, an area considered large enough to meaningfully characterise the local paleoecology.

The fact the coal beds exist is a legacy of the ancient forests, which were peat-depositing tropical forests.

The peat beds, pressurised over time, transformed into the coal deposits.

“It’s marvellously preserved,” Pfefferkorn said.

“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.”

The researchers also found some smaller trees with leaves, branches, trunk and cones intact, preserved in their entirety.

“It’s like Pompeii,” Pfefferkorn added.

“Pompeii gives us deep insight into Roman culture but it doesn’t say anything about Roman history in and of itself.

“But on the other hand, it elucidates the time before and the time after.

“This finding is similar. It’s a time capsule and therefore it allows us now to interpret what happened before or after much better.”

The study was supported by the Chinese Academy of Science, the National Basic Research Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the University of Pennsylvania.

The paper was published this week in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.