Falkland Islands: Tree-free area shows evidence of former forest [Video]

No trees have grown on the windswept Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean for tens of thousands of years — just shrubs and other low-lying vegetation. That’s why a recent arboreal discovery nearly 20 feet (6 metres) beneath the ground caught researchers’ attention.

Dr. Zoë Thomas, a lecturer in physical geography at the U.K.’s University of Southampton, was doing fieldwork on the island in 2020 when she got word from a friend that tree trunks had been unearthed from a layer of peat at a building site near the capital of Stanley.

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“We thought that’s really weird, because one of the things about the Falklands that everyone knows about is that no trees grow,” said Thomas, lead study author of recent research on the Falklands. “It’s very sort of windswept and barren.”

The …