Primeval Forest Found Deep Below the Ocean's Surface Off the Coast of Alabama

Scuba divers swimming off the coast of Alabama recently uncovered a forest more than 50,000 years old located deep below the ocean's surface, LiveScience reports.

Kept protected in an oxygen-free environment beneath ocean sediments, Ben Raines, the executive director of the nonprofit Weeks Bay Foundation and one of the first divers to explore the ancient Bald Cypress trees, reports that the forest contains trees so well-preserved that they still smell like fresh Cypress sap when cut.

The stumps of the trees cover an area over 0.5 square miles (0.8 kilometers) some 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico.

As to why the forest was discovered now, Raines hypothesizes that it was likely uncovered in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, though he estimates that the landscape has just a few short years before wood-burrowing marine animals effectively destroy it forever.

It was this mass of fish, however, that first tipped a local dive shop owner off in the first place that something was there, though he kept the location secret until 2012 due to fears that scuba divers, famous for plucking treasures from ancient shipwrecks, would tarnish the site.

After swearing him to secrecy, the owner revealed the spot to Raines, who dove down to discover a pristine, primeval Cypress swamp that had since become an artificial reef, attracting an array of sea life.

"Swimming around amidst these stumps and logs, you just feel like you're in this fairy world," Raines told LiveScience.

Raines quickly reached out to several scientists, one of whom was Grant Harley, a dendrochronologist - a person who studies trees - at the University of Mississippi.

Intrigued, Harley and geographer Kristine DeLong of Louisiana State University decided to get a closer look, creating a sonar map of the area and analyzing two samples Raines took from the trees. In doing so, they discovered that the trees were about 52,000 years old with thousands of years of climate history, including the Wisconsin Glacial period, which featured sea levels much lower than today's, embroidered into their trunks.

"These stumps are so big, they're upwards of two meters in diameter - the size of trucks," Harley told LiveScience. "They probably contain thousands of growth rings."

All told, however, Harley estimates that they have just two years to decode the thousands of years' worth of history within in the forest's trees.

"The longer this wood sits on the bottom of the ocean, the more marine organisms burrow into the wood, which can create hurdles when we are trying to get radiocarbon dates," he said. "It can really make the sample undatable, unusable."

Correction: The story previously stated that Hurricane Sandy uncovered the trees, rather than Hurricane Katrina.