England: Oldest fossil forest in the world discovered

The 390 million year old fossils discovered by a team of researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Cardiff are the oldest fossilized trees ever found in Britain. And at the same time about the oldest known fossil forest on earth. This is about four million years older than the previous record holder, which was found in the US state of New York.

Prototypes of current tree species
The fossils were found near the town of Minehead, on the southern bank of the Bristol Channel – a bay between England and Wales. The fossilized trees, called Calamophyton, look like palm trees at first glance and were a kind of prototype of the tree species we know today. Their trunks were not solid wood, but thin and hollow in the middle. They also lacked leaves and their branches were covered in hundreds of branch-like structures.

These trees were also much smaller than their existing descendants: the largest were only between two and four meters tall, the University of Cambridge reports on its website. As they grew, the Calamophyton dropped their lower branches, leaving behind many remnants of vegetation that served as food for invertebrates and gave them support on the forest floor.

Calamophyton is related to ferns
“It was quite a strange forest – not like any you would see today,” explains researcher Neil Davies. From today’s perspective, Calamophyton, which although reminiscent of palm trees, are not related to palm trees but to ferns, would be more likely to be considered shrubs, he says.

Until now, scientists assumed that this part of the English coast contained no significant plant fossils. But in addition to its age, the fossil find also shows how early trees shaped landscapes and stabilized riverbanks and coastlines hundreds of millions of years ago, the researchers report in the Journal of the Geological Society.