The New York Times reported on an Oct. 20 paper “Wildfires in the Campanian of James Ross Island: a new macro-charcoal record for the Antarctic Peninsula,” published in Polar Research by a team led by Flaviana Jorge de Lima of the Federal University of Pernambuco, along with scientists in Brazil and Germany, which demonstrated that widespread “paleo-fires” burned across much of the planet during the Cretaceous period, which was 145-66 million years ago. (https://polarresearch.net/index.php/polar/article/view/5487)
This was a time when the continents were just beginning to separate into distinct land masses; South America was beginning to move away from Africa; Australia was still connected to Antarctica. Mammals began to appear on the scene 178 million years ago.
The climate was warm and humid, due to a high level of volcanic activity and the rapid spreading of the sea floor. The polar regions had no continental ice sheets; dinosaurs roamed comfortably through the forests of Antarctica.
Much research has been done for decades in the Northern Hemisphere on the “paleo-fires,” and it was presumed that the Southern Hemisphere was largely unaffected.
