考古学家在英国威尔士发现了有记录以来最早的野火证据。这个证据以烧焦残余物的形式存在于极为古老的泥岩中。

 

Go back to what's known as the Silurian Period and Earth looked very different from today. What is now the UK, would've been south of the Equator. A few pioneering plants had begun to evolve, but nothing containing wood; no trees, no shrubs¹.

回到志留纪，那时的地球看起来与如今大不相同。现在的英国当时应位于赤道以南。一些先锋植物已经开始进化，但没有一种植物含有木头，也没有树木和灌木。

 

However, according to this new evidence, pulled up in mudstones from under Rumney (in Wales), there was still plenty of fuel, which could have started a wildfire, in the form of giant mushrooms, called Prototaxites. All that remains² of these strange organisms now, is fragments of charcoal³.

然而，据这个从威尔士拉姆尼地底泥岩中钻取出的新证据显示，那个时期仍有大量燃料可能会引发野火，作燃料的是一种被称作原杉藻的巨型蘑菇。现在，这些奇怪的生物体只剩下了炭碎片了。

 

Ian Glasspool, a palaeobotanist from Colby College in the US, says the 430-million-year-old Welsh charcoal, pushes back the earliest known evidence of a wildfire by 10 million years.

美国科尔比学院的古植物学家伊恩·格拉斯普尔说，这些在威尔士发现的距今4.3亿年的炭碎片将已知最早的野火证据提早了1000万年。

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