The first report of a Campanian palaeo-wildfire in the West Antarctic Peninsula

Wildfires in the Campanian of James Ross Island: a new macro-charcoal record for the Antarctic Peninsula

“…It is plausible that volcanic activity ignited the palaeo-wildfire that created the charcoal reported here. Volcanic activity was also the probable cause proposed for charcoal occurring in the Cretaceous deposits on Nelson Island (Manfroi et al 2015). Furthermore, the deposition of charred wood under coastal marine conditions usually implies severe fragmentation, so the preservation of fragments reaching 38.0 mm in length suggests a parautochthonous origin for the material studied here.…”

“…5). Santonian remains come from the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, at Table Nunatak of the Kenyon Peninsula (Eklund et al 2004) and from Rip Point, north-east Nelson Island (Manfroi et al 2015); there are also briefly mentioned, but not described, charcoalified plant mesofossils from the Hidden Lake and Santa Marta formations, of Coniacian/Campanian age, on James Ross Island (Kvacek & Sakala 2011). The new record presented here, from another unit of the James Ross Sub-Basin, represents a significant input to the palaeobotany studies in the area.…”

“…However, no palaeobotanical evidence that palaeo-wildfires reached the vegetation in this area has been described so far, although the region as a whole had favourable conditions for fire, for example, abundant vegetation, the presence of ignition sources and adequate pO 2 levels. The first palaeobotanical evidence that palaeo-wildfires reached Antarctica was reported only recently; it occurred during the Campanian at Rip Point, on Nelson Island (Manfroi et al 2015). Considering the scarcity of data and taking into account the significance of the evolution of the Antarctic Peninsula for palaeobiodiversity, we present the first occurrence of macro-charcoal coming from the James Ross Island.…”

“…Extensive wildfire activity during the Cretaceous "highfire" period directly affected the plant communities, playing a significant role in palaeoecological changes in different environments (Scott et al 2014). A compilation for the entire Cretaceous by Brown et al (2012), as well as numerous additional studies published in recent years (e.g., Manfroi et al 2015;El Atfy et al 2019;Lima et al 2019;Uhl et al 2019), has demonstrated that fires were frequent and were widespread during this period, reaching both low-and high-latitudinal areas. There is evidence of fire on every continent in the Late Cretaceous, but most of the data come from the Northern Hemisphere (Brown et al 2012).…”

Repeated occurrence of palaeo-wildfires during deposition of the Bahariya Formation (early Cenomanian) of Egypt

“…In the last few years, a number of studies (e.g. Manfroi et al 2015;Muir et al 2015;Abu Hamad et al 2016a, 2016bCarpenter et al 2016;dos Santos et al 2016;El Atfy et al 2016;Martill et al 2012;Lima et al 2019) have already demonstrated that the Cretaceous wildfires were more frequent on the southern continents than previously reported in the literature (e.g. Brown et al 2012).…”