The site is just two to three million years older and less than 30 miles away from what was previously believed to be the world's oldest forest.
Three types trees were identified in the soil, the paper says. The first, of the Eospermatopteris genus, was a short-lived, weedlike plant also found at the site in Gilboa. A second, of the Archaeopteris genus, was a precursor to modern seed plants. The third, possibly of the Lycopsida class, may be a type of tree that lived in coal swamps that had not been previously identified as early as the Devonian Period.
"This pushes … of this kind of root system back in time," University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill paleobotanist Patricia Gensel, who was not involved in the study, told ."By the mid-Devonian, we have pretty sophisticated trees. Before this, we never would've been able to say that."Stein, who along with his team uncovered the first site in Gilboa, said more research was needed to study fossilized forests around the world, not just in New York.
"It seems to me, worldwide, many of these kinds of environments are preserved in fossil soils," Stein in a statement. "And I'd like to know what happened historically, not just in the Catskills, but everywhere."
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