Wuda Is SO The New Pompeii

Thought Pompeii was the coolest ashy disaster history has to offer? Think again. Penn paleobotanist (That's a thing? OK.) Hermann Pfefferkorn is making petrified plants sexy again with his new study on a stretch of ash-covered, 298-million-year-old forest in Wuda, China. The "marvelously preserved" site yields remarkable insights into the climate and ecology of the time, says Pfefferkorn, whose last name is a beautiful, beautiful thing. The forest is essentially a frozen snapshot of what life was like way back in the Permian Period. Vintage, so adorable. Wuda Spring Break 2012!