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Fossilised trees mystery solved

The trees formed the first-known forests on the planet


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A Cardiff fossil expert has identified a pair of 385-million-year-old trees, thought to be among the world's oldest.
American researchers found fossilised remains in New York state two years ago, but their identity was unknown.

They called in Dr Christopher Berry from Cardiff University, who confirmed the remains are from the Genus Wattieza, a fern-like plant which formed earth's first known forests.

Dr Berry described the discovery as a "spectacular" find.

The upright stumps of fossilised trees were first uncovered after a flash flood in Gilboa, New York, more than a century ago.

But until two further fossils were found two years ago, which had fallen sideways with their trunk, branches, twigs and crown still intact, no-one knew what the entire trees looked like.

The American team called in Dr Berry, who has 17 years of tree fossil expertise, to help.


The tree fossils were found in New York state

Dr Berry, of Cardiff university's School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Sciences, said it was a "spectacular find" which had allowed scientists to recreate early forest ecosystems.

"This was also a significant moment in the history of the planet," he said.

"The rise of the forests removed a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This caused temperatures to drop and the planet became very similar to its present-day condition.

"Branches from the trees would have fallen to the floor and decayed, providing a new food chain for the bugs living below."

Dr Berry worked with colleagues from Binghamton University, New York and from New York State Museum.

Their findings are published in the 19 April edition of the scientific journal Nature.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/6568233.stm
 
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Published online: 18 April 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070416-10
Full fossil found for the earliest trees
Discovery provides the first view of early forests.
Heidi Ledford


These tall, ancient trees didn't have leaves, but bunches of 'branchlets'.

Frank Mannolini/New York State Museum

Palaeontologists have uncovered a whole sample of the oldest known trees, providing a glimpse of what the Earth's earliest forests might have looked like.

Incomplete fossils of these trees were first found in a rock quarry in upstate New York in the late 1800s and were classified as Eospermatopteris. The trees were thought to live 390 to 350 million years ago. That discovery was in itself exciting, but the fossils contained only the trees' trunks, so no one really knew what the trees looked like.

Now, William Stein of Binghamton University in New York and his colleagues have found two fossils of trees from this period, one of which shows the crown connected to the trunk. The researchers report their findings this week in Nature1.

The work finally finds a home for fossils of the top portion of the tree, which had been found before but not identified as Eospermatopteris crowns. Some palaeontologists had suspected that these fossils were independent plants rather than the tops of trees, with the 'crown' rooted directly into the ground.

The overall architecture of the trees is reminiscent of modern tree ferns, palm trees, and cycads. Eospermatopteris trees predate the evolution of broad, flat leaves like those seen today. Instead they contain what might better be described as photosynthetic 'branchlets' assembled together in fern-like fronds. "At that time, plants were just nothing but sticks," says Stein. "They must have looked really strange, but they were acting as leaves."

Fossils of trunks alone were found in upstate New York in the late 1800s.

W. Stein

Match fossilized tree-tops with their bottoms is often a struggle says Brigitte Meyer-Berthaud, a palaeontologist at the Agricultural Research Centre for International Development in Montpellier, France. "We can find many different parts of the tree, but generally they are not connected," she says. Although the base of the tree is rooted to the ground and tends to stay there, the aerial portions are more easily broken off and transported away, she explains.

Understanding what the first trees looked like can provide a glimpse into the ancient ecology that shaped Earth's chemical cycles, says Thomas Algeo, a geochemist at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. When land plants became large, around the time of these trees, they had a substantial effect on geochemical cycles, he notes.

Scars down the trunk of the new fossils suggest that the trees littered the forest floor with cast off branches. Algeo believes that litter would have consisted mainly of lignin and cellulose, which bacteria would not have been able to break down. That means the branches would have been broken up by mechanical erosion rather than by decaying to release carbon dioxide.

Over time, litter from Eospermatopteris and other land plants could have pulled a large amount of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, he says, leading to an atmospheric cooling that prompted a short ice age starting about 360 million years ago. "That event was probably caused by burial of organic carbon associated with land-plant evolution," Algeo says.

Visit our newsblog to read and post comments about this story.


References
Stein W. E., Mannolini F., VanAller Hernick L., Landing E. & Berry C. M.et al. Nature, 446. 904 - 907 (2007). | Article |
 
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'Early wood' samples reshape plant history
By Mark Kinver, Environment reporter, BBC News

A study of fossilised plant samples has shown that woody plants probably first appeared about 10 million years earlier than previously thought.
The 400-million-year-old samples revealed rings of cells characteristic of wood, a team of scientists observed.
They also suggested that the woody substance appeared to be a mechanism to transport water rather than acting as a support to allow plants to grow taller.
The findings have been published in the journal Science.

"The previous earliest woody plants are of Middle Devonian age (roughly 390 million years old). Our plants are of Early Devonian age, [so about] 400 million years old," explained co-author Phillipe Gerrienne, a geologist from the University of Liege, Belgium.
Dr Gerrienne added that the samples were the first and, to date, only samples of woody plants that had been placed in the Early Devonian period.
"The Middle Devonian plants with wood are shrubs or trees of very small stature. Our plants are much smaller, herbaceous and probably 20-40cm (8-16in) tall ," he told BBC News.
"I would even say that our plants are smaller than some other contemporaneous plants. In fact, all Early Devonian plants were herbaceous, so externally, you would not be able to tell which had wood and which had not.

Dr Gerrienne went on to explain that the team thought that the samples were "early representatives" or ancestors of lignophytes, which is the largest group of plants on Earth today, and includes gymnosperms (such as conifers) and angiosperms (flowering plants).

"Lycophytes (seed-free vascular plants), some bizarre early ferns or early horsetails could produce some wood, but the wood of our plants shows a precise feature (divisions of the cells perpendicularly to the stem surface - see photo above) that is typical of lignophytes," he observed.
He added that the ancient plant samples featured in the study would help researchers understand the first steps of "true wood" evolution.
"For example, our plants show that the rays (horizontal cells) most probably evolved after the other cells in wood (longitudinal cells)."

In addition, Dr Gerrienne said the findings also helped shed light on the initial biological role of the woody substance in early plants.
"Our plants are very small; they have thickened cells just below their epidermis (skin). These two facts suggest that wood was not necessary for support," he concluded.
"This is why we suggest that wood was probably used to enhance the flow of water in the stem. It is only later in evolution that wood was used to improve support.
"The idea that wood first evolved because it improved water conductance had already been suggested by others, but on a theoretical basis only.
"It is nice to have two different plants that illustrate this theoretical inference."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14543120
 
'Chinese Pompeii' 300m-year-old forest preserved in ash

Researchers have unearthed a forest in northern China preserved under a layer of ash deposited 300 million years ago.
Preservation of the forest, just west of the Inner Mongolian district of Wuda, has been likened to that of the Italian city of Pompeii.

The researchers were able to "reconstruct" nearly 1,000 sq m of the forest's trees and plant distributions.
This rare insight into how the region once looked is described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The excavations sampled three sites across a large expanse that was covered with about a metre of ash.
Due to the pristine preservation of some of the plants, the team estimate the ash fell over the course of just a few days, felling and damaging some of the trees and plants under its weight but otherwise keeping them intact.

"It's marvelously preserved," said study co-author Hermann Pfefferkorn of the University of Pennsylvania in the US.
"We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That's really exciting."

The team identified six groups of trees, ranging from low-lying tree ferns to now-extinct 25m trees Sigillaria and Cordaites, as well well-preserved specimens of another extinct group called Noeggerathiales.
Based on the findings, the team worked with a painter to depict what the forest would have looked like before the ash cloud descended.

Prof Pfefferkorn said that, as a particularly complete and well-caught moment in time, the forest would serve as a "baseline" for assessing future finds.
"It's like Pompeii," he said. "Pompeii gives us deep insight into Roman culture, but it doesn't say anything about Roman history in and of itself.

"But on the other hand, it elucidates the time before and the time after. This finding is similar. It's a time capsule and therefore it allows us now to interpret what happened before or after much better."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17117223
 
More ancient tree fossils.

The oldest fossil forest in Asia has been discovered in the walls of clay quarries in China.

Researchers say it is the largest example of a Devonian forest, made up of 250,000 square metres of fossilised lycopsid trees. The forest, which covers an area the equivalent of 35 football pitches, is believed to have existed between 359 and 419 million years ago. It is the earliest example of a forest in Asia, according to the study published in the Current Biology journal.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/break...over-oldest-fossil-forest-in-asia-942695.html
 
Even more ancient!

The earliest fossilised trees, dating back 386 million years, have been found at an abandoned quarry in New York.

Scientists believe the forest they belonged to was so vast it originally stretched beyond Pennsylvania. This discovery in Cairo, New York, is thought to be two or three million years older than what was previously the world's oldest forest at Gilboa, also in New York State. The findings throw new light on the evolution of trees.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50840134
 
A new fossil plant

Antoine Champreux, a Ph.D. student in the Global Ecology Lab at Flinders University, has cataloged the discovery of the new fern-like plant species as part of an international effort to examine the Australian fossil in greater detail.

The fossil was found in the 1960s by amateur geologist Mr John Irving, on the bank of the Manilla River in Barraba, New South Wales. The fossil was exposed after major flooding events in 1964, and Mr Irving gave the fossil to the geological survey of New South Wales, where it remained for more than 50 years without being studied.

It was dated from the end of the Late Devonian period, approximately 372-to-359 million years ago—a time when Australia was part of the Southern hemisphere super-continent Gondwana. Plants and animals had just started to colonize continents, and the first trees appeared. Yet while diverse fish species were in the oceans, continents had no flowering plants, no mammals, no dinosaurs, and the first plants had just acquired proper leaves and the earliest types of seeds.

Well-preserved fossils from this era are rare—elevating the significance of the Barraba plant fossil.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-australian-fossil-reveals-species.html
 
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Doesn't seem to be a Thread so lets start with peas in other times.

Exquisite fossils unearthed in Inner Mongolia reveal how peas got their hard coat​

From roses to dogwoods to rice, flowering plants are among the most diverse and successful organisms on the planet. More than 350,000 species strong, they’re beautiful, nourishing, and critical for their ecosystems. Yet how they evolved has befuddled evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin. Now, thanks to cutting-edge technology and a chance find in the Inner Mongolian countryside, researchers have taken a big step toward understanding how flowering plants, or angiosperms, came to be.

“It’s like a mystery being solved on CSI,” says Douglas Soltis, a plant evolutionary biologist at the University of Florida who was not involved with the work. Tracing how the traits of these ancient plants led to the structures of flowers today, he says, is “pretty exciting.”

Angiosperms evolved about 125 million years ago and now dominate many of Earth’s landscapes. They reproduce via seeds, as do the evolutionarily older gymnosperms, which include pine trees, ginkgoes, and others. But angiosperms evolved some key innovations for seed production that likely enabled their success. Their seeds form in the carpel, a tubular structure that sticks up from the center of a flower and matures into a pod that holds seeds—peas or beans, for example—inside. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...-mongolia-reveal-how-peas-got-their-hard-coat
 
An extensive and rich fossil site in Brazil was discovered in 1951, then lost for seven decades before being re-discovered in 2019. The late Permian plant fossils therein are expected to provide much insight into the conditions preceding the Great Dying (End Permian Extinction Event).
Lost fossil 'treasure trove' rediscovered after 70 years

Scientists have finally rediscovered a lost fossil site in Brazil, after the researchers who originally discovered it 70 years ago were unable to retrace their steps to the remote location. The unique geologic conditions at the long-lost site preserve paleontological treasures that could help shed light on one of the biggest extinction events in Earth's history.

The rediscovered site, which is known as Cerro Chato, is located near Brazil's border with Uruguay in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. Around 260 million years ago, towards the end of the Permian period (299 million to 251 million years ago) conditions at the site were ideal for trapping and preserving dead organisms. As a result, multiple rocky layers at Cerro Chato are chock-full of delicate fossils — especially plants, which typically do not fossilize as well as animals do because they lack hard parts.

Paleontologists who first discovered Cerro Chato in 1951 were excited by its exceptionally well-preserved Permian remains. Unfortunately, without memorable landmarks or modern technologies, such as GPS, the researchers were unable to accurately record the exact geographical coordinates of the site, and when they attempted to return to the Permian treasure trove they could not find it. After several attempts to retrace their steps, the team gave up the search and declared the site lost. However, a new group of researchers took up the mantle and successfully found the lost location in 2019. ...

The plant fossils at Cerro Chato could help researchers understand more about drastic climate change that took place toward the end of the Permian, which triggered an extinction event that wiped out around 90% of life on Earth. "The fossils we are studying are of global importance, as they are direct testimonies of the environmental changes that took place during the Permian period," Ferraz said. "These studies will help us to retrieve information about the distribution of these plants around the world."

The team published its findings online May 15 in the Brazilian Society of Paleontology's journal Paleodest (opens in new tab), and the study is available to download for free in English and Portuguese. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/lost-fossil-site-rediscovered
 
Here are the bibliographic details and (English) abstract for the published report. The full report is currently available only in Portuguese.


REDESCOBERTA DO AFLORAMENTO CERRO CHATO, UM IMPORTANTE SÍTIO FOSSILÍFERO PARA O PERMIANO DA BACIA DO PARANÁ
Joseane Salau Ferraz, Karine Pohlmann Bulsing, Joseline Manfroi, Margot Guerra-Sommer, André Jasper, Felipe Pinheiro
Paleodest, v. 36, n. 75, 2021 (Português (Brasil)), pp. 62-72.

Abstract
The Rediscovery of the Cerro Chato Outcrop, an Important Permian Fossil Site of the Paraná Basin. The Cerro Chato outcrop, Dom Pedrito municipality, Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), represents an important fossil site for the understanding of the environmental changes that occurred throughout the end of the Paleozoic, culminating in the largest extinction event recorded thus far. The sedimentary beds of the Cerro Chato outcrop yield a unique fossil content, documenting a rich association of plants and fish remains. The taphoflora preserved in the outcrop documents an important evolutionary stage of the flora that inhabited lacustrine and lagoon environments during the continentalization of Paraná Basin depositional systems. Here we address the rediscovery of this important fossil site, whose geographic location was unknown for decades, preventing scientific research and the duly preservation of the outcrop. In this sense, the Cerro Chato outcrop is re-introduced to the scientific community and general public through revealing its precise location, its geological context and the discovery of completely new fossiliferous levels.

Our work contributes to the expansion of paleontological data recorded for this location and the furtherance of the preservation of this important Brazilian paleontological site.

SOURCE: https://sbpbrasil.org/publications/index.php/paleodest/article/view/290
 
A fun looking (probable) echinoid fossil found on Gorleston beach by someone yesterday posted to facebook's Norfolk Fossil Finds today ..

aechinoid001.jpg
 
Newly published research results obtained by studying 3D algae fossils indicate plants may well have originated earlier than previously suspected.
Plants evolved even earlier than we thought, exquisite 3D fossils suggest

The oldest green algae preserved in three dimensions may hint that plants originated earlier than previously believed.

The fossils are older than 541 million years, putting them in the late Ediacaran period (635 million to 541 million years ago). This was at the cusp of the Cambrian period (541 million to 485.4 million years ago) when life suddenly diversified in a flash known as the Cambrian Explosion. The fossils are tiny — only half a millimeter in diameter — but are preserved in exquisite detail, down to the bumpy tubular structures that line their outer layers and the masses of delicate filaments that make up their core. They come from Shaanxi province in China, which was a shallow sea in the late Ediacaran.

Green algae are members of the plant kingdom that emerged at least a billion years ago, but the new finding, which shows that a diversity of modern-looking algae species existed earlier than thought, may push back the origin of the plant kingdom perhaps another 100 million years, the researchers reported Sept. 21 in the journal BMC Biology. The ancient algae are surprisingly complex, and almost identical to a modern genus of seaweed called Codium.

"Discovering something so close to Codium in the Ediacarian is likely going to push this origin of green algae and certainly the origin of the entire plant kingdom further back in time," said study co-author Cédric Aria, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto and Royal Ontario Museum. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/oldest-3d-green-algae-fossil
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract from the published study. Links to the report's full text are available at the link below.


Chai S, Aria C, Hua H.
A stem group Codium alga from the latest Ediacaran of South China provides taxonomic insight into the early diversification of the plant kingdom.
BMC Biol. 2022 Sep 21;20(1):199.
doi: 10.1186/s12915-022-01394-0.
PMID: 36127662; PMCID: PMC9491005.

Abstract

Background:
In recent years, Precambrian lifeforms have generated an ever-increasing interest because they revealed a rich eukaryotic diversity prior to the Cambrian explosion of modern animals. Among them, macroalgae are known to be a conspicuous component of Neoproterozoic ecosystems, and chlorophytes in particular are already documented in the Tonian, when they were so far expected to originate. However, like for other major eukaryotic lineages, and despite predictions of molecular clock analyses placing roots of these lineages well into the Neoproterozoic, a taxonomic constraint on Precambrian green algae has remained difficult.

Results: Here, we present an exceptionally preserved spherical, coenocytic unicellular alga from the latest Ediacaran Dengying Formation of South China (> ca. 541 Ma), known from both external and internal morphology, fully tridimensional and in great detail. Tomographic X-ray and electronic microscopy revealed a characteristic medulla made of intertwined siphons and tightly packed peripheral utricles, suggesting these fossils belong to the Bryopsidales genus Codium. However, its distinctly smaller size compared to extant species leads us to create Protocodium sinense gen. et sp. nov. and a phylomorphospace investigation points to a possible stem group affinity.

Conclusions: Our finding has several important implications. First, Protocodium allows for a more precise calibration of Archaeplastida and directly confirms that a group as derived as Ulvophyceae was already well diversified in various ecosystems prior to the Cambrian explosion. Details of tridimensional morphology also invite a reassessment of the identification of other Ediacaran algae, such as Chuaria, to better discriminate mono-versus multicellularity, and suggest unicellular Codium-like morphotypes could be much older and widespread. More broadly, Protocodium provides insights into the early diversification of the plant kingdom, the composition of Precambrian ecosystems, and the extreme longevity of certain eukaryotic plans of organization.

SOURCE: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36127662/
 
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Leave it asleep.

As early as 252 million years ago, some plants may have curled up their leaves at night for a cozy “sleep.”

Fossilized leaves of two now-extinct Gigantonoclea species bear signs of nyctinasty, or circadian rhythmic folding at night, researchers report February 15 in Current Biology. That would make these specimens the first known fossilized examples of this curious plant behavior, the team says.

The two leaf fossils were discovered in a rock layer in southwestern China that dates to between 259 million and 252 million years ago. In both species, the leaves were broad, with serrated edges. But most curiously, they bear oddly symmetrical holes.

Leaves of the common clover Trifolium. Two of the three leaves have symmetrically placed holes


Symmetrical leaf damage in newly reported plant fossils strongly resembles insect-produced holes in modern plants that can fold up their leaves, such as the common clover Trifolium (shown).STEPHEN MCLOUGHLIN

Insects made those holes while feeding on the leaves while they were folded, say paleontologist Zhuo Feng of Yunnan University in Kunming, China and colleagues. Similar symmetrical patterns of insect damage in leaf fossils can be used to distinguish folding behavior from leaves that might have shriveled as the plant died, the team says.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-fossil-leaves-fold-insect-bites
 
You say tomato, they say there's another story to it.

We might have to rethink everything we thought we knew about the evolutionary history of the nightshade (Solanaceae) family of plants, a category that includes tomatoes, potatoes, and chili peppers. The recent identification of several fossils suggest these plants have been around a lot longer than previously thought.

And we mean a lot longer – in the case of chili peppers, some 50 million years in North America, rather than the 15 million years indicated by previous studies. They now appear to date back to the Eocene, which covers 56 to 34 million years ago.

This latest study was sparked off by a fresh look at fossils uncovered in museum collections, which hadn't been identified as chili peppers but which bore the tell-tale signs of coming from that family: little spikes sticking out from the end of a fruiting stem. To the trained eye, that marks them out as Solanaceae plants.

"At first, I thought 'No way! This can't be true,'" says evolutionary biologist Rocío Deanna from the University of Colorado Boulder. "But it was so characteristic of the chili pepper. The family is way older than we thought."

Two newly identified fossils, an ancient chili and tomato, had their ages compared with other nightshade fossils from Colombia and Argentina, backing up the idea that at the time of the Eocene, these plants were spread across both North and South America.

Our world would've looked very different back then though: no ice anywhere, much higher sea levels, and twice as much carbon dioxide in the air. Chili peppers would have been more like fruit we commonly think of as berries back then, the researchers say, though probably still as spicy.

The most likely mode of distribution for the seeds of these plants would've been via the guts or feathers of birds – but the new research raises the question of whether chili peppers started in the north and then went south, or the other way around.

https://www.sciencealert.com/an-ancient-chili-pepper-may-rewrite-the-history-of-the-tomato-plant
 
You say tomato, they say there's another story to it.

We might have to rethink everything we thought we knew about the evolutionary history of the nightshade (Solanaceae) family of plants, a category that includes tomatoes, potatoes, and chili peppers. The recent identification of several fossils suggest these plants have been around a lot longer than previously thought.

And we mean a lot longer – in the case of chili peppers, some 50 million years in North America, rather than the 15 million years indicated by previous studies. They now appear to date back to the Eocene, which covers 56 to 34 million years ago.

This latest study was sparked off by a fresh look at fossils uncovered in museum collections, which hadn't been identified as chili peppers but which bore the tell-tale signs of coming from that family: little spikes sticking out from the end of a fruiting stem. To the trained eye, that marks them out as Solanaceae plants.

"At first, I thought 'No way! This can't be true,'" says evolutionary biologist Rocío Deanna from the University of Colorado Boulder. "But it was so characteristic of the chili pepper. The family is way older than we thought."

Two newly identified fossils, an ancient chili and tomato, had their ages compared with other nightshade fossils from Colombia and Argentina, backing up the idea that at the time of the Eocene, these plants were spread across both North and South America.

Our world would've looked very different back then though: no ice anywhere, much higher sea levels, and twice as much carbon dioxide in the air. Chili peppers would have been more like fruit we commonly think of as berries back then, the researchers say, though probably still as spicy.

The most likely mode of distribution for the seeds of these plants would've been via the guts or feathers of birds – but the new research raises the question of whether chili peppers started in the north and then went south, or the other way around.

https://www.sciencealert.com/an-ancient-chili-pepper-may-rewrite-the-history-of-the-tomato-plant
caveman chile above seasoning some available meat: mammoth, rino, rodent, w or w/o nachos
 
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A Fossil forest filling in the gaps.

A beautifully preserved fossil forest uncovered on a river bank in Japan has been described in detail for the first time.

The rare site takes scientists one step closer to reconstructing an entire Eurasian plant from the late Miocene epoch, and filling in one of the many gaps in the botanical tree of life.

The late Miocene epoch stretched from around 10.4 to 5 million years ago, and the forest was located beneath what is now the Kiso River, north-east of Nagoya.

Map of Japan with a box highlighting the study area


Location of study site in Japan (Nishino et al., Scientific Reports, 2023)

The forest was first seen in modern times during a severe drought in 1994, when roughly 400 fossilized tree stumps emerged from the water.
Most of the stumps have since been submerged once more, but researchers have successfully examined 137 of them, and the surrounding fossilized leaves.


They've now published their analysis of the site and provided a picture of the plants that once covered the wooded area.

https://www.sciencealert.com/exquisitely-preserved-fossil-forest-uncovered-in-japan
 
A good deal of old wood.

An ancient mangrove forest with trees that towered up to 130 feet high has been discovered over 20 million years after a volcanic mudflow smothered it in what is now Panama, a new study reveals.

Researchers first discovered the fossils in 2018 during a geological expedition on Barro Colorado Island (BCI). The island sits in Panama's human-made Gatun Lake, which thousands of ships cross every year as they cruise through the Panama Canal. BCI once formed part of a hilly landscape that became partly submerged in 1913, when engineers dammed the Chagres River to build the canal, and was set aside as a nature reserve in 1923. Today, the tropical forests of BCI are some of the most intensively studied in the world.

"We never imagined that fossil wood would be in BCI" given the numerous scientists who have surveyed the island over the past century — "nobody had reported them," study co-author Carlos Jaramillo, a geologist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, told Live Science in an email. The fossils "are hard to tell apart from any other decaying tree in the forest," because they look like rotting stumps, Jaramillo said.


Despite their appearance, the mangrove fossils are actually stunningly preserved, Jaramillo said. That's because a volcanic eruption buried the trees around 23 million years ago during the early Miocene epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago), slowing down decomposition and freezing the landscape in time.

https://www.livescience.com/planet-...st-discovered-hiding-in-plain-sight-in-panama
 
Lets have a big hand for these palm trees, oldest known forest.

Researchers have discovered a fossil forest with small, palm-like trees and arthropod tracks dating back to the Middle Devonian.

Four pictures showing fossil trees from the Middle Devonian discovered in the U.K.

Newly discovered fossil trees belong to the world's oldest known forest. (Image credit: Christopher Berry)

Fossilized trees discovered by chance in southwest England belong to Earth's earliest-known forest, new research has found. The 390 million-year-old fossils supplant the Gilboa fossil forest in New York state, which dates back 386 million years, as the world's oldest known forest.

The new discovery highlights differences between the two ecosystems, suggesting forests went from being relatively primitive to well established over the course of just a few million years, said Neil Davies, the lead author of a new study published Feb. 23 in the Journal of the Geological Society.

"Why it's important — broadly — is it ticks the boxes of being the oldest fossil forest," Davies, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., told Live Science. The finding is also remarkable because it reveals stark differences between the complex array of ancient plants found at Gilboa and the newly discovered forest, which appears to have hosted just one type of plant, Davies said.

This now-extinct type of plants, known as cladoxylopsids, is thought to be closely related to ferns and sphenopsids (horsetails). "They look like palm trees, but they're in no way related to palm trees," Davies said. "They've got a long central stem and what look like palm fronds coming off, but those palm fronds aren't really leaves — they're actually just lots of twiglets."

These twig-crowned trees would have stood between around 6.5 and 13 feet (2 to 4 meters) high, meaning "it wouldn't have been a very tall forest," Davies said.

The fossil trees were preserved both as hollow trunks filled with sediment and as fallen logs that were flattened over the eons — like "casts inside the sediment," Davies said. Little scars where branches used to attach to the trees are still visible, he added. ...

https://www.livescience.com/planet-...he-oldest-ever-found-at-390-million-years-old
 
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