From Ancient Charcoal, Hints of Wildfires to Come

The oldest evidence of wildfire in the world can be found in a laboratory on the fourth floor of a brick building in Waterville, Maine. To the untrained eye, it looks like a speck of black lint, not much larger than the tip of a pin. To Ian J. Glasspool, a paleobotanist at Colby College, it is a 430-million-year-old piece of charcoal.The specimen, which Dr. Glasspool discovered in a mudstone from southern Wales,…