| 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 |
