Charcoal fragments record a fire-ravaged forest of giant fungi some 430 million years ago.
It's these strange organisms that went up in flames and left the blackened traces, Dr Glasspool believes.
The rock records a near-shore marine setting, meaning the tiny fragments of charcoal were being washed out to sea. That in itself is instructive because to have left their mark, it suggests the Prototaxites fires on land were sufficiently large and widespread.Together, the observations push the earliest evidence for wildfire on Earth back by about 10 million years.
The concentration of O2 in the air today is about 21%, but early in Earth's history it was much less. It took photosynthetic algae in the oceans millions of years to terraform the planet.
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