The earliest wildfire smouldered approximately 419 million years ago during the Silurian period, when oxygen levels may have been higher than today’s. A team of scientists from Cardiff University’s School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Science (UK) found evidence of a low-intensity burn, probably started by a lightning, whilst studying three-dimensional charred fossils of small plants found in rocks near Ludlow, in the Welsh Borderland, UK in April 2004.