EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT WILDFIRES PRESERVED IN COAL REVEALS CLUES TO EARTH’S CLIMATE

• Molecular evidence of massive wildfires (palaeofires) that swept across Gondwana forests ~250 million years ago (Permian), reconstructed from Indian coal-bearing sediments.
• Work done by Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknow — an autonomous body of DST, Ministry of Science & Technology — using palynofacies + Raman + FTIR spectroscopy on Godavari Valley Coalfield samples.
• Relevance: links palaeoclimate, coal-forming environments and extreme fire events, feeding into models for future climate change and ecosystem response.