A 42,000-year-old tree rewrote Earth's history...
Workers excavating a site for the expansion of a geothermal power plant in Ngāwhā, New Zealand 🇳🇿, unearthed something no one expected. Buried under 26 feet of soil lay a kauri tree measuring eight feet in diameter and 65 feet in length. Carbon dating revealed it had lived for around 1,500 years, between 41,000 and 42,500 years ago.
So well preserved was the wood that the bark was still attached. Scientists immediately recognized its staggering potential. "There's nothing like this anywhere in the world," said Alan Hogg from the University of Waikato. "This Ngāwhā kauri is unique."
Its rings offered an incredible 1,700-year record of Earth's environmental conditions, precisely spanning the period of the Laschamps Excursion — the last complete reversal of Earth's magnetic poles.
An international study using the ancient swamp kauri showed that a temporary breakdown of Earth's magnetic field 42,000 years ago sparked major climate shifts leading to global environmental change and mass extinctions. During a period of about 500 years, the poles remained reversed, with a field strength that varied below 28 percent of today's value.
With the dwindling of the magnetic field, Earth lost an important protective shield against cosmic radiation.
Researchers dubbed this episode the "Adams Transitional Geomagnetic Event," a tribute to Douglas Adams, who wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that "42" was the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
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