Stunning Inland Mangrove Forest Is a ‘Lost World’

In their evaluation, the researchers needed to determine how these purple mangroves had been capable of flourish within the freshwater alongside the San Pedro River within the Mexican state of Tabasco. Red mangroves, or Rhizophora mangle, often solely develop in saltwater alongside tropical coastlines; this forest was too removed from the coast for these timber to have entry to saltwater.

Using genetic, geologic, and vegetation knowledge together with fashions of historic sea ranges, the scientists decided that the forest really started rising within the area some 125,000 years in the past, when the oceans prolonged considerably farther inland. This interval, often known as the Penultimate Interglacial Period, was a brief heat interval in between eras of glaciation. Although the waters receded because the world modified, the mangrove forest, extremely, remained.