Newly Found Remains of a 390 Million-year-old Forest Reveals Something Mysterious About Ancient Trees

The Debrief ^ | March 8, 2024 | MJ Banias

[SunkenCiv]

Researchers have uncovered the earliest fossil evidence of ancient forests in the British record. The findings uncover a novel and unrecognized 390-million-year-old forest landscape that sheds new light on the early evolution of Earth's land-based biosphere.

...the study focuses on the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) Hangman Sandstone Formation in Somerset and Devon, in Southwest England, and reveals an ancient era where a forest would have lived, dominated by cladoxylopsid trees...

These trees, growing up to 2-4 meters tall, had narrow trunks with an expanded rounded base up to 20 cm in diameter and small roots. They formed densely spaced forests, shedding abundant plant debris...

The trunks of these ancient trees were hollow in the center, and had rings of woody support strands around the outside. Leaves would have been fairly new on the evolutionary timeline, showing up about 20 million years prior to this forest; these trees had twig-like structures protruding from the branches...

One of the more remarkable findings was at Culver Cliff in Somerset, where at least 17 cladoxylopsid tree trunks were found preserved on a single bedding surface. The trunks, measuring 5-10 cm in diameter and up to 1.4 meters in length, provide a glimpse into the spacing and density of these ancient forests. These were tight spaces, jam-packed with early life.

But these ancient forests were responsible for something else. They played a key role in shaping the earliest 'modern' riverbanks.

The study's authors suggest that the cladoxylopsid trees colonized a sizable distributive fluvial system that essentially reshaped the landscape between land and a nearby waterway. All this flora was responsible for sediment accumulation, and their roots held the soils together enough to essentially create an early riverbank.

[SunkenCiv]

Scientists have discovered remnants of the Earth's oldest fossil forest on the north coast of Devon and Somerset in the UK.

Discovered by researchers from Cambridge University and identified at Cardiff University, the fossils show incomplete trunks up to two meters long, together with small branches, of a pioneering type of tree called cladoxylopsids.

Dr Christopher Berry, a Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences who identified the fossils talks about the discovery.

Earth's earliest forest revealed in Somerset fossils | 2:18
Cardiff University | 15.3K subscribers | 1,246 views | March 7, 2024

Transcript
0:00	·	a fossil Forest is not just a record of
0:02	·	fossil trees but it's a record of where
0:04	·	fossil trees were growing where they
0:06	·	were standing in relation to one another
0:08	·	what the Ecology of the forest was and
0:11	·	what environmental setting it was
0:12	·	growing
0:14	·	in I'm Chris Berry I'm a paleobotanist
0:17	·	at Cardiff
0:22	·	[Music]
0:24	·	University the trees are are of the
0:26	·	oldest type that we find um anywhere in
0:29	·	the world been published to date so
0:31	·	they're about 390 million years old we
0:34	·	have very good evidence of what fossil
0:36	·	forests were like 5 million years later
0:39	·	in particularly in New York state um but
0:42	·	this is the oldest record that we have
0:43	·	at the
0:45	·	moment one part of the discovery is the
0:47	·	fossil trees themselves it's called
0:50	·	cladal opid and its generic name is
0:54	·	calyon so they're calyon
0:58	·	trees
1:01	·	these are long trees uh 1 2 to 4 M long
1:05	·	probably in length and formed of rows of
1:09	·	attached branches and instantly
1:12	·	recognizable to Specialists like me but
1:14	·	maybe you might think of it as looking a
1:16	·	bit like a bicycle track across the
1:18	·	rocks or something like
1:20	·	that second part of the discovery is um
1:24	·	in particular one place where we can see
1:26	·	the bases of the trees actually in the
1:28	·	sediment where they were see sitting
1:30	·	next to an ancient river Channel and we
1:32	·	can see the trees falling over um and
1:35	·	pointing away from their bases towards
1:37	·	the river Channel and in various
1:39	·	different directions so we know from
1:41	·	that exactly where the trees were
1:43	·	growing what the forest would have
1:44	·	looked like and and we can reconstruct
1:46	·	it from those uh
1:51	·	Footprints trees are so important today
1:54	·	we know that from people worrying about
1:56	·	deforestation and so on and and what is
1:59	·	it that important about trees well it's
2:01	·	the way that they exchange carbon
2:03	·	dioxide and oxygen and and effectively
2:05	·	control the composition of the
2:07	·	atmosphere it's these types of
2:10	·	activities that make plants so important
2:12	·	to our
2:17	·	planet

[SunkenCiv]

The artist’s conception drawing reminds me of those trees on Socotra.

https://search.brave.com/images?q=Socotra%20yemen

[SunkenCiv]

[Veto!]

I’ll read this tomorrow.

[SunkenCiv]

A reconstruction of a Calamophyton forest, where the trees here measure 2 to 3 meters high.

Image: Peter Giesen/Chris Berry

[Ken H]

“...the cladoxylopsid trees colonized a sizable distributive fluvial system that essentially reshaped the landscape...”

---

I’ve been trying to make that point for years but no one would listen.

[minnesota_bound]

They spotted owls in that ancient forest nesting.

[Nateman]

Of course they threw in the Carbon Scam . Seems like most of these nature articles are just an excuse for placing in that propaganda pill

[drSteve78]

I’ve been trying to make that point for years but no one would listen.

Just like a man in the forest telling his wife anything, he is of course “wrong”😑

Kindred spirit, Slainte!

[drSteve78]

A reconstruction of a Calamophyton forest, where the trees here measure 2 to 3 meters high.

In the drawing of the forest, where are the gnomes?

[Openurmind]

Palm trees.

[roving]

I’ll stick with the Bible on how old the earth is.

[BlackbirdSST]

I’ll stick with the Bible on how old the earth is.

How old is the earth?

[Tax-chick]

Cool. I love trees.

[MayflowerMadam]

Around 6,000 years.

[quantim]

“Of course they threw in the Carbon Scam”

Yep, stop reading there too. Some 40% of a billion years ago too including a little lecture at the end that is not of value or relative to today. Geez it was still the super-continent Pangea in those times not to mention the Carboniferous period hadn’t even got well underway.

[BlackbirdSST]

Around 6,000 years.

LOL!

[2nd Amendment]

Thank you! It’s good to find somebody who believes the Word of God and doesn’t fall for the Darwinian scientism scam

[RamingtonStall]

Flat Earthers unite on their 6,000 year old Earth! ROTFLMAO

Lots of really important stuff for us to learn from the Bible, but the Age of the Earth and the age of the Universe is not among the things one wants or needs to learn.

[texanyankee]

Any nurseries that stock cladoxylopsid trees?