Eideard

The northernmost mummified forest ever found in Canada is revealing how plants struggled to endure a long-ago global cooling.

Researchers believe the trees — buried by a landslide and exquisitely preserved 2 to 8 million years ago — will help them predict how today’s Arctic will respond to global warming.

They also suspect that many more mummified forests could emerge across North America as Arctic ice continues to melt. As the wood is exposed and begins to rot, it could release significant amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and actually boost global warming…

Over the summer of 2010, the researchers retrieved samples from broken tree trunks, branches, roots, and even leaves — all perfectly preserved — from Ellesmere Island National Park in Canada.

“Mummified forests aren’t so uncommon, but what makes this one unique is that it’s so far north. When the climate began to cool 11 million years ago, these plants would have been the first to feel the effects,” Joel Barker said. “And because the trees’ organic material is preserved, we can get a high-resolution view of how quickly the climate changed and how the plants responded to that change…”

Bravo! It’s a treat to watch scientists reverse engineering the climate change processes we’re going through now.

The newly exposed wood rotting contributes only a tiny portion of greenhouse gases, say, compared to methane released from thawing permafrost. But, it’s all part of a process reversed in a geologic instant compared to the millions of years required for this previous serious cooling.

Medical examiners have identified a mummified corpse that was left in a car’s passenger seat for 10 months in Southern California…

Authorities had said earlier it could take weeks to identify the homeless woman, but the Orange County coroner’s office was able to rehydrate the desiccated body’s fingertips to obtain a usable fingerprint, said Costa Mesa police Detective Sgt. Paul Beckman. The office will not release the name until next-of-kin are notified, he said.

The woman’s remains, discovered Monday in a car parked illegally in Costa Mesa, are little more than skin and bones and weigh 30 pounds, said police Sgt. Ed Everett.

The car’s driver befriended the homeless woman in a park in nearby Fountain Valley and told her she could sleep in the car. When she found the woman dead in the passenger seat, she was afraid to tell police, Everett said.

The driver is a 57-year-old former real estate agent from Corona del Mar, an upscale beach community, who herself had fallen on hard times and was living with friends, he said.

Authorities have not determined if the driver, whose name has been withheld, will face any charges in the case…

The driver had placed a box of baking soda in the car to mask the smell and covered the body with a blanket and some clothes, he said.

Officers found it Monday when they noticed a stench while responding to a call about an illegally parked vehicle.

Sometimes you need the really large economy size box of baking soda.

1937 issue of newspaper wrapped around crockery next to the bodies

Officials plan to perform autopsies on the remains of two babies found wrapped in newspapers from the 1930s and stuffed in a trunk in an L.A. basement.

The L.A. County coroner’s office and Los Angeles Police Department are trying to figure out how the babies died and how they got to the basement. The autopsies will involve a pathologist and an anthropologist. Investigators also will try to use DNA testing to determine whether the babies are related and toxicology tests to find out why they died.

Officials with knowledge of the case said one of the babies appeared to be premature — and might have been miscarried or aborted. The other baby appeared to be a newborn…

The trunk appears to have belonged to a woman named Jean M. Barrie. Inside it were postcards sent to her from far-flung locales such as Korea and South America and a pile of black-and-white photographs that showed a beautiful, fair-haired woman — who may have been Barrie — on vacation and in a wedding gown…

Records show a Jean Barrie who worked as a nurse and lived about three miles from the Glen-Donald apartment building, which is at the corner of South Lake Street and what is now James M. Wood Boulevard, in 1933.

Authorities said they were classifying the discovery as a “death investigation.” They stressed that it was too early to tell if this was a homicide case but vowed to find out what had happened to the babies.

Gonna be a hell of a movie. And forensic anthropology is fascinating – anytime.

UPDATE: Turns out Ms. Barrie emigrated from Scotland in the 1920′s – first, to Canada; then, down to the USA. Worked as a home nurse for the invalid wife of an LA dentist – who she married a little while after his wife died. Read on.