12-19-2019, 07:08 PM
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists...orest.html
Scientists have discovered remnants of the world's oldest fossil forest in a sandstone quarry in Cairo, New York.
It is believed the extensive network of trees, which would have spread from New York all the way into Pennsylvania and beyond, is around 386 million years old.
This makes the Cairo forest around 2 or 3 million years older than what was thought to be the world's oldest forest at Gilboa, also in New York State and around 40 km away from the Cairo site.
The new findings, which have been published today in the journal Current Biology, have thrown new light on the evolution of trees and the transformative role they played in shaping the world we live in today.
A team led by scientists at Binghamton University, New York State Museum and Cardiff University have mapped over 3,000 square meters of the forest at the abandoned quarry in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in the Hudson Valley.
That does sound quite impressively old, even if it is only marginally older than the previous record-holder .
Sounds like there was quite a mix of trees too: some of them were basically large ferns, while others weren't that different from modern trees (they would have had wooden trunks and flat, green leaves). If you want to know what it might have looked like, here is an artist's impression of one of these early forests: it still looks vaguely forest-like, but there are noticeable differences from what we're used to!
Scientists have discovered remnants of the world's oldest fossil forest in a sandstone quarry in Cairo, New York.
It is believed the extensive network of trees, which would have spread from New York all the way into Pennsylvania and beyond, is around 386 million years old.
This makes the Cairo forest around 2 or 3 million years older than what was thought to be the world's oldest forest at Gilboa, also in New York State and around 40 km away from the Cairo site.
The new findings, which have been published today in the journal Current Biology, have thrown new light on the evolution of trees and the transformative role they played in shaping the world we live in today.
A team led by scientists at Binghamton University, New York State Museum and Cardiff University have mapped over 3,000 square meters of the forest at the abandoned quarry in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in the Hudson Valley.
That does sound quite impressively old, even if it is only marginally older than the previous record-holder .
Sounds like there was quite a mix of trees too: some of them were basically large ferns, while others weren't that different from modern trees (they would have had wooden trunks and flat, green leaves). If you want to know what it might have looked like, here is an artist's impression of one of these early forests: it still looks vaguely forest-like, but there are noticeable differences from what we're used to!
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