A team of Chinese researchers has announced the discovery of a sinkhole: nearly 300 meters long by 150 wide and 200 m deep in the Zhuang Autonomous Region of Guangxi, in Xian de Leye. If this kind of geological formation is not rare in this area, what is exceptional is to have found a primary forest at the bottom.
A forest straight out from another world “, describes the leader of the scientific expedition. To reach this isolated nature, untouched by any human activity, the researchers abseiled down the wall of the abyss. It took them several hours to reach the bottom.
They discovered trees 40 meters high and shoulder-length shade plants. The results of their analyzes have not yet been published, but Serge Muller, professor emeritus of botany at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, interviewed by Releasebelieves that this forest, well sheltered from man and the vagaries of the weather, could constitute a repository of relict species that may have disappeared elsewhere “. So there could be plants, but also unique fauna, bacteria, fungi.
In 1994, a primitive forest had been discovered in the heart of a remote canyon several hundred kilometers from Sydney, Australia. An endemic tree, the Wollemi pine had been found there and it belongs to a species dating back more than 200 million years.
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