World’s oldest fossilized tree discovered on Devon and Somerset coast

The world’s oldest fossilized tree, dating back 390 million years, was found on the high sandstone cliffs of the Devon and Somerset coast.

The fossilized trees are the oldest ever discovered, predating the previous record holder found in New York state by approximately 4 million years.

These fossil trees are called KaramophytaFrom a distance, it resembles a palm tree, but is the “prototype” of the trees we are familiar with today. Their trunks are not solid wood, but thin, hollow in the middle, and are between 2 and 4 meters high. They also have no leaves, and the branches are covered with hundreds of branch-like structures.

The fossils were discovered near Minehead on the southern shore of the Bristol Channel, close to what is now Butlin’s Holiday Camp.

“This is a very strange forest – unlike any forest you see today,” said Professor Neil Davies, a geologist at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the study. “There isn’t any undergrowth to speak of, the grass hasn’t emerged yet, but these dense trees have lost a lot of branches, which has a big impact on the landscape.”

Scientists had previously thought that no significant plant fossils existed in this area of ​​the British coast, but this particular find, in addition to its age, shows how early trees hundreds of millions of years ago helped shape the landscape and stabilize riverbanks and coastlines.this result Reported in Geological Society Journal.

The forest dates back to the Devonian period, 358 million to 419 million years ago, when life began its first major land expansion. By the end of this period, the first plants with seeds appeared, and the first land animals (mainly arthropods) had developed.

“The Devonian period fundamentally changed life on Earth,” Davis said. “It also changed the way water and land interacted, as trees and other plants helped stabilize sediments through their root systems, but little is known about the earliest forests. Very little.”

The fossilized forest discovered by the researchers was found in the Hangman Sandstone Formation on the coast of North Devon and West Somerset. During the Devonian period, the area was not connected to the rest of England, but was located further south, connected to parts of Germany and Belgium, where similar Devonian fossils have been found.

Dr Christopher Berry, a paleobotanist at Cardiff University and co-author of the paper, said: “Based on 30 years of studying this tree around the world, when I first saw pictures of the trunks I knew immediately they were What.” “It was amazing to see them so close to home. But the most illuminating insights came from seeing these trees for the first time where they grew.

“This is the first opportunity we have to directly observe the ecology of this earliest type of forest and explain its environment. Karamophyta Trees are being grown and their impact on the sedimentary system is assessed,” he added.

Fieldwork conducted along some of England’s highest sea cliffs, some of which are only accessible by boat, revealed that this sandstone formation is actually rich in plant fossils from the Devonian period.

During the Devonian period, the area was a semi-arid plain criss-crossed by small rivers running northwest from the mountains. Researchers say the emergence of the first densely packed clumps of trees will affect the way rivers flow through the landscape. “People sometimes think British rocks have been studied enough, but this shows that revisiting them can yield important new discoveries,” Davis said.