'This Was a Pretty Weird Forest'

Scientists say they've found the world's earliest forest
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 7, 2024 5:45 PM CST
The World's Earliest Known Forest Has Been Found
Fossils of fallen Calamophyton logs.   (Neil Davies)

It's a "pretty weird forest"—but a record-setting one. Scientists say they've found the oldest known forest on Earth, taking the crown from a forest in New York's Catskills that had previously held the title. The BBC reports the fossilized forest, reported on in the Journal of the Geological Society, was discovered in high sandstone cliffs on the coast of South West England and dates to 390 million years ago; that's about 4 million years older than the New York one. More on the find:

  • The trees themselves: Lead author Neil Davies of Cambridge explains the forest's weirdness, noting the find is "not like any forest you would see today." The fossilized trees are Calamophyton, which looked like palm trees. But as a press release explains, they "were a 'prototype' of the kinds of trees we are familiar with today," with hollow trunks, zero leaves, and branches covered in a sea of twig-like structures. The tallest was 12 feet.

  • Where they're located: The researchers say the find was made in the Hangman Sandstone Formation along the Devon and Somerset coasts, in high cliffs that are in some cases accessible only by boat. At the time, it wasn't attached to England but to portions of Germany and Belgium, per the BBC.
  • The timing: The press release explains the forest emerged during the Devonian Period, a key time when life began to expand onto land in a meaningful way. "By the end of the period, the first seed-bearing plants appeared and the earliest land animals, mostly arthropods, were well-established." The emergence of trees and other plants "helped stabilize sediment through their root systems, but little is known about the very earliest forests," says Davies.
(More discoveries stories.)

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