Scientists find ancient Wyoming forest took 100,000 years to recover from warming

Wyoming tetons Representative image from Canva Deep in the rock record of Wyoming, a layer of fossil leaves tells a quiet but powerful story about what happens to forests when the planet warms rapidly. About 56 million years ago, during a spike in global temperatures known as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a lush subtropical forest that once covered the region lost roughly 60 percent of its canopy. New researchtitled 'Forest canopy decline under elevated CO2 during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum' published in the journal Science, based on tens of thousands of fossil leaves, shows that the ecosystem did not bounce back quickly. It took more than 100,000 years for the forest to regain its former diversity and structure. As reported by Smithsonian Magazine, the findings offer a rare, detailed look at how ancient forests responded to extreme warming and provide a sobering parallel for today’s climate change.A forest preserved in stoneThe story begins in the Bighorn Basin of north central Wyoming, where sedimentary rocks from the early Eocene epoch are rich in plant fossils. Over millions of years, leaves that fell into ancient rivers and floodplains were buried in f...