Monday, August 06, 2007

another amazing find to piss off young-earthers

Archaeologists discover 8-million-year-old forest in Hungary

BUKKABRANY, Hungary (AFP) - Archaeologists have found an eight-million-year old forest of cypresses, well preserved and not fossilised, in Bukkabrany in north eastern Hungary.

"The discovery is exceptional as the trees kept their wooden structure, they neither turned into coal nor were petrified," Tamas Pusztai, the deputy director and head of the archaeological department at the local Otto Herman museum who oversaw the excavation, told AFP.

Archaelogists announced the find last week after uncovering the mysterious forest of taxodiums, a kind of swamp cypress, after a few days of digging.

Miners working in a brown coal mine had first uncovered several tree trunks that had been turned into coal, a common occurrence in this kind of environment.

"But further down, we found 16 trees that had remained where they had grown some eight million years ago and that are very well preserved," Pusztai said.


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