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...