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(upbeat dramatic music)
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Yellowstone National Park
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stretches over nearly 3,500 square miles
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of spectacular wilderness.
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Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho all claim shares
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in the dramatic vistas and charismatic wildlife.
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The landscape that we see here
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is formed by numerous geologic processes,
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spanning all the way back to 3 billion years old.
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Greater Yellowstone
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sits on top of a volcanic hotspot
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where devastating geological events unfolded.
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We had kind of three major caldera forming eruptions,
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big explosive events, leading up to today.
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Here we have kind of a series of volcano classic deposits,
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a bunch of different kind of individual volcanic rocks.
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The prehistoric upheaval
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created a bizarre cemetery on Specimen Ridge
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and around Tom Miner Basin.
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These dead trees are made of stone.
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The Gallatin Petrified Forest is a series of forests
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that were buried in volcanic debris flows.
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We have these layers and layers of forest.
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Thanks to the volcanism,
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a big mudslide come in, burying the forest.
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And then you have a new forest growing for maybe
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a few hundred to a thousand years.
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{\an8}(soft dramatic music)
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(birds chirping)
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Greater Yellowstone's fossilized forests
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contain the remains of trees that died from molten lava,
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ash, and mud around 50 million years ago.
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The tremendous heat melted snow on the mountains
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sending deadly mudslides rushing down the slopes,
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burying everything in their path.
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{\an8}That will go down like a river channel
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{\an8}and anything that's in that channel,
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{\an8}will just be inundated with all that material.
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Dr. Madison Myers
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is a Volcanologist at Montana State University.
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Stumps, leaves, and even pollen
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were all preserved in the volcanic slides,
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resulting in a unique record of life during the Eocene.
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{\an8}This was the warmest time period since the dinosaurs died.
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{\an8}We had no ice caps at the poles.
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In Wyoming, you had this very warm, temperate,
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to even tropical climate.
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It supported palm trees, it supportive crocodiles,
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alligators, turtles, all these things
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that you just could not even imagine here today.
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Dr. Ellen Currano
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from the University of Wyoming,
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uses fossil plants to investigate ancient forest ecosystems.
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One of the coolest things about plant fossils
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is that you can use them to interpret what climate was like.
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If you can just identify the fossil and you know what it is,
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if it's something that is around today
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or maybe something closely related is around today,
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we can look at where does that species live today?
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(footsteps crunching)
(insects buzzing)
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(soft upbeat music)
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The Gallatin Petrified Forest
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was just a normal forest,
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but you can imagine it being a forest at the flanks
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or at the base of a volcanic system.
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So for instance, thinking of Mount St. Helens
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and that eruption and all those trees that were then buried
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or knocked over by flows that were coming off of it
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during the eruption,
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similarly, the Gallatin Petrified Forest was buried
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by repeated material coming off of these volcanoes.
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It wasn't a one time event.
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The area's volcanoes erupted continuously
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for millions of years.
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Yellowstone's Petrified Forest
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actually contains the remains of 27 separate forests,
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each stacked on top of the other, layer by layer.
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(rhythmic upbeat music)
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(birds chirping)
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It is so much bigger
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than almost any other petrified forest we know.
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14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
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Okay, that's 20 years right there.
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So that kind of gives you an impression
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of how old this tree was.
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(birds chirping)
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And it's bigger in a couple dimensions,
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most notably the up and down direction.
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No other place in the world
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boasts a comparable record.
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One interesting feature
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of the petrified forests around Yellowstone
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is the strange absence of diagonal or leaning trees.
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You could understand something
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about the intensity of that degree flow
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by looking at how much of it has been kind of knocked down.
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You would have to understand something about the strength
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of the trees.
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Here at Yellowstone,
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you have that forest being buried in place,
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20 plus times.
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Despite detailed studies
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over the last 100 years, no animal fossils have been found.
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Plant material is actually preserved
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more readily than animal material in these things.
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And I think part of that is because
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animals have the ability to move and run away if a flow,
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if they hear that and feel that rumbling
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of something coming towards them,
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whereas you don't have the ability if you're a tree to move.
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So it's actually pretty rare to find plants and animals
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in exactly the same layers.
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(birds chirping)
(soft relaxing music)
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Fossilized plant material
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gives us a more accurate snapshot
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of the prehistoric climate in this region.
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I use leaves to interpret climate
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and, specifically, leaves from flowering plants.
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So think of something like a magnolia
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versus something like an elm or a beech.
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If you go to the Southern U.S.,
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you see a lot of things like magnolias and dogwoods,
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whereas if we're up in more Northern climates,
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so you've got oaks and maples.
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So we have this modern relationship
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between the temperature in which a forest grows
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and then we apply that same thing in the past.
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Over 150 species
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of fossil plants from Yellowstone
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have now been described,
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but it's the big trees that draw the most attention.
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Some of the trees appear to be preserved
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in their original positions
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while others may have been transported by mud or water.
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But if you see a bunch of trees
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that don't seem to be knocked over within the flow,
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it's either that the impact of the flow
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wasn't high enough to knock them over
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or that they were on a more level piece of ground.
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(soft dramatic music)
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There is evidence
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that some of the petrified wood was transported.
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So for instance, in Tom Miner Basin,
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you can see, like, stumps of trees
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that are at all different angles and different sizes
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that seem to suggest that they may have been transported.
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However, there are other areas in the petrified forest
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that trees seem to be largely upright still,
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and preserved in-situ that way.
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So I think both processes likely were happening
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that you had some that were transported
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in flows that were high enough energy or small enough trees,
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whereas others were just kind of covered by the material
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that were coming off of these volcanoes.
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After each eruption and damage to the forest,
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the resilient trees began to grow again.
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But the forests were very different 50 million years ago.
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Yellowstone's Petrified Forest
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isn't the only fossil forest in the world,
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but it is unique because of how the trees were preserved.
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The petrified forest here
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is different from the one that's located in Arizona,
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mostly by the process which formed the petrified wood.
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They both involve volcanic systems,
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but the way in which they were buried,
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in which the solidification process occurred,
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are different processes.
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So here the petrified forest was formed
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through debris flows coming off of the Absaroka Range,
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burying the material in these kind of thick,
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really large, cobbly, volcanic material.
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So some of them were standing,
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some of them were knocked down,
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and then silification occurred.
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In other ancient grooves,
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minerals completely replaced
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every part of the trees over time.
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But in Yellowstone, the original organic matter
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and actual cells of the wood
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have been preserved within the minerals.
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Yellowstone is this amazing volcanic system
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and we have that to thank
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for the incredible preservation of these fossil forests.
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So we have this amazing source of silica all around
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and then, you have the hydrothermal activity.
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(water splashing)
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Super-heated water is traveling through the rock.
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It's dissolving out some of the silica
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and then that silica-rich, really hot water,
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is permeating the wood.
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And so as it does that, it starts cooling
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and silica starts precipitating out
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in the empty pore space in the wood.
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And so in a lot of petrified wood
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it's just straight up silica,
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but the way things worked here with the volcanism
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and with the hydrothermal activity,
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you have the silica precipitating out inside of the cells
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and a lot of that organic material
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then remaining in the cell wall.
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And it's been cutoff from oxygen,
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from bacteria that are gonna decay it.
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(birds chirping)
(soft upbeat music)
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Most of the fossil trees
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in Yellowstone are redwoods.
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Redwoods are some of the
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fastest growing trees on Earth.
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In good growing conditions, so lots of water,
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enough nutrients, good CO2,
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a redwood can grow something between two
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and even as much as eight feet per year.
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(birds chirping)
(soft dramatic music)
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Today, redwoods
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don't grow in Greater Yellowstone.
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The region is now classified as subalpine,
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but Ellen can tell from fossil leaves
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that Yellowstone once enjoyed a subtropical climate.
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A well-preserved leaf looks like
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it just fell off of the tree
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and you can see every single detail,
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the outline of the leaf, the veins,
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every tiny little bit of venetian on that leaf.
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And you know, they're just gorgeous.
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(footsteps crunching)
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50 million years ago here in the greater Yellowstone area,
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the mean annual temperature would have been something like
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70 degrees Fahrenheit.
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(rain splashing)
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The area probably received
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50 to 60 inches of rain each year.
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Like any forest, living or fossilized,
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insects play a key role
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in the health of the trees and plants.
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That's a big one.
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Let's say that an insect chews a hole in a leaf.
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The leaf can't repair itself,
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it's not gonna grow new tissue to fill in that hole.
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But what it's gonna do is it's gonna make
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a thickened rim of tissue around where that damage occurred.
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So looking at damage can tell us
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something about insect diversity.
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And this is something that can be really interesting
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during times of changing climates.
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As CO2 levels increase,
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plants actually become less nutritious.
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Average temperatures in the park
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are higher now than they were 50 years ago,
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especially during springtime.
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And nighttime temperatures are increasing more rapidly
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than daytime temperatures.
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We may be headed back to the Eocene.
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(birds chirping)
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Peak warming was between about
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53 and 51 million years ago.
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And, fun fact, if we continue burning fossil fuels,
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by the year 2140, Earth's climate will be a lot more similar
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to that peak warming than it is to today's climate.
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(waterfall splashing)
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The investigation
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into Yellowstone's mysterious Petrified Forest
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will continue for a long time.
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The scientists hope to use their discoveries
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to help to predict what the rapidly changing climate
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might mean for Yellowstone in the future.
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The fossil record gives us this opportunity
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to see how ecosystems are changing
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in response to climate change,
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both the temperature and the carbon dioxide levels.
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We always are studying past climate to try to understand
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something about future climate, for sure.
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(birds chirping)
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Yellowstone's fossil forests
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provide geologists with a window to the past
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that may be a critical window into our future.
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(birds chirping)
(soft dramatic music)
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