Uman agrees that few people have looked very closely at ancient fulgurites. For his part, he and his colleagues actually make new fulgurites of a sort by triggering lightning with cable-tethered rockets that send the lightning into drums containing whatever material they want to experimentally zap. That makes him something of an expert on fulgurites, at least the modern kind.
"Fulgurites are hollow, shiny on the inside and rough on the outside," said Uman. "They are very fragile." So the discovery that they can stick around for thousands of years is impressive, he said.
As for the change in Libyan climate, from semi-arid to hyper-arid, that’s not exactly a surprise, of course, said Navarro-González. After all, the area where the fulgurite was found is known for having virtually no lightning storms at all under the current climate regime.
The extending of the Sahel more than 600 miles north has also been suggested by other researchers looking at other lines of evidence, like pollen, Navarro-González said. So the fulgurites of Libya are confirmation of that other work.
Elsewhere, however, fulgurites could reveal surprises. For this reason Navarro-González hopes his work will spur others to take a closer look at fulgurites that have been sitting in drawers and display cases for decades.
