Laura is a science news writer, covering a wide variety of subjects, but she is particularly fascinated by all things aquatic, paleontology, nanotechnology, and exploring how science influences daily life. Laura is a proud former resident of the New Jersey shore, a competitive swimmer, and a fierce defender of the Oxford comma.
Dinosaur fossils get most of the hype, but uncovering plant fossils is crucial for understanding the long-gone ecosystems of the past. In a plant find that’s definitely worth the buzz, a team of researchers have found the oldest known fossilized forest. The remains of this ancient forest are embedded in sandstone along the coast of southwest England and date back about 390 million years ago.
Peter Giesen/Chris Berry. The forest dates back between 419 and 358 million years ago, during the Devonian Period. This was when life on Earth began its first really big expansion from the sea up onto the land. By the end of the Denovian, the first seed-bearing plants and earliest land animals were well-established. “The Devonian period fundamentally changed life on Earth,” study co-author and University of Cambridge geologist Neil Davies said in a statement.
Neil Davies Older trees existed elsewhere on the plant, since plants first started to grow on land about 500 million years ago. However, this is the earliest known example of a forest where trees were growing close together en masse. While digging into these high sandstone cliffs, the team identified fossilized plants and plant debris, fossilized tree logs, traces of roots, and sedimentary structures.
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