Land plants begin to appear in the fossil record as early as the late Ordovician (~450 Ma), show signs of diversification during the Silurian and by the end of the Devonian Period most of the basic features of plants are apparent. During the Carboniferous Period terrestrial biomass became so high as to cause a fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide, triggering the longest period of glaciation of the Phanerozoic, and such a boost to oxygen in the air (to over 30%) that insects, huge by modern standards, were able to thrive and the risk of conflagration was perhaps at its highest in Earth’s history. Yet surprisingly, the first signs of massive forest fires appear in the Devonian when vegetation was nowhere near so widespread and luxuriant as it became in the Carboniferous (Kaiho, K. et al. 2013. A forest fire and soil erosion event during the Late Devonian mass extinction. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, v. 392, p. 272-280). Moreover, Devonian oxygen levels were well below those of the present atmosphere and CO₂ was more than 10 times even the post-industrial concentration (387 parts per million in 2013). Such atmospheric chemistry would probably have suppressed burning.

Kunio Kaiho of Tohoku University in Japan and colleagues from Japan, the US and Belgium analysed organic molecules in Belgian marine sediments from the time of the late-Devonian mass extinction (around the Frasnian-Famennian boundary at 372 Ma). A range of compounds produced by hydrocarbon combustion show marked ‘spikes’ at the F-F boundary. The thin bed that marks the extinction boundary also shows sudden increase then decrease in δ¹³C and total organic carbon, indicative of increase burial of organic material and a likely increase in atmospheric oxygen levels. Another biomarker that is a proxy for soil erosion follows the other biogeochemical markers, perhaps signifying less of a binding effect on soil by plant colonisation: a likely consequence of large widlfires. Unlike the biomarkers, magnetic susceptibility of the boundary sediments is lower than in earlier and later sediments. This is ascribed to a decreased supply of detrital sediment to the Belgian marine Devonian basin, probably as a result of markedly decreased rainfall around the time of the late-Devonian mass extinction. But the magnetic data from 3 metres either side of the boundary also reveal the influence of the 20, 40, 100 and 405 ka Milankovich cycles.

This set of environmentally-related data encourages the authors to suggest a novel, if not entirely plausible, mechanism for mass extinction related to astronomically modulated dry-moist climate changes that repeatedly killed off vegetation so that dry woody matter could accumulate en masse during the Frasnian while atmospheric oxygen levels were too low for combustion. A mass burial of organic carbon at the end of that Age then boosted oxygen levels above the burning threshold to create widespread conflagration once the wood pile was set ablaze. Makes a change from continental flood basalts and extraterrestrial impacts… Yet it was about this time that vertebrates took it upon themselves to avail themselves of the new ecological niche provided by vegetation to haul themselves onto land.