Palm trees in Vancouver? Florida’s climate in Burnaby? Plant fossils suggest region once had a warmer climate | 24CA News

There was a time when Burnaby Mountain, and the areas round it alongside B.C.’s south coast, was a hotter, much less mountainous area the place palm timber grew, in response to new analysis that recognized plant fossils unearthed on the website greater than 50 years in the past. 

When Simon Fraser University was being constructed within the late Sixties, paleobotanist Rolf Mathewes was an undergraduate, and he helped collect dozens of plant fossils at a deposit uncovered by the development website. The fossils date again to round 40 million years in the past.

SFU then locked the specimens in cupboards, the place they remained largely untouched for many years.

Now a professor on the college and on the twilight of his profession, Mathewes got down to revisit the plant fossils he helped accumulate.

“I thought, before I retire, I should really publish something on these fossils. They’ve never been published and never really been studied,” stated Mathewes. 

Mathewes and his analysis staff verified the gathering contained a mixture of subtropical and temperate forest components, giving clues about Burnaby Mountain’s local weather within the distant previous. 

The findings had been revealed within the International Journal of Plant Sciences this month, wanting into the plant fossils that date again to the late Eocene interval. The Eocene lasted from 55.8 to 33.9 million years in the past and is understood for its hotter local weather.

Palm tress as soon as in B.C.?

Mathewes says a important fossil within the assortment was a palm leaf fragment. Palm timber can nonetheless be planted in B.C., however they’ll now not thrive within the area.

“If you wanted to match what kind of climate they’re telling us was here, the best match is somewhere around Cape Fear on the East Coast of the United States,” stated Mathewes.

Mathewes says a worldwide cooling interval that adopted the Eocene period allowed for the palms within the space to be slowly changed by temperate timber like elms and sweetgum.

“The palms can tolerate it here, but it’s not warm and tolerant enough to make it into the forest.”

The staff additionally recognized a hydrangea flower and a flower of an extinct plant associated to the basswood, which is native to Eastern North America. 

“Some of the things that turned up were amazingly surprising … That includes some flowers and seeds of plants that don’t grow here and are only found in either Asia or in eastern North America.”

Mathewes additionally notes the Burnaby Mountain area resembled a floodplain in the course of the Eocene.

“It was a sea-level plain near the ocean with rivers and ponds and marshes on it, and that’s where the fossils were produced,” he stated.

‘A glimpse of … what issues would possibly appear to be’

Kendra Chritz, an earth sciences professor on the University of British Columbia who was not concerned within the examine, says discovering the palm within the fossil locality offers additional proof of Metro Vancouver’s local weather being heat and humid round that interval.

“If you think about places where palms grow naturally now like California, Florida or Mexico, imagine something like that but in British Columbia. It’s very warm, very wet and diverse,” Chritz stated.

Chritz says it is essential to review intervals just like the Eocene to assist perceive at present’s altering local weather. She says the Eocene interval had excessive ranges of carbon dioxide, which may inform at present’s growing ranges. 

“This kind of gives us a glimpse of maybe what things might look like, but we also have to remember that this is well before we existed.”

Chritz says human actions put a distinct context to a warming local weather, when animals and crops can not transfer round and adapt as simply as they did within the distant previous. 

Mathewes says he is completely happy to have revisited the fossils he helped accumulate a long time in the past. The examine is devoted to his late mentor who oversaw the excavation, Robert C. Brooke.

“I’m glad I managed to finally finish analyzing the story with the help of my colleagues,” Mathewes stated.

“I should have done it years ago, but I was tied up.”