In the northern United States, paleontologists have found fossilized remains of primitive trees that grew almost 390 million years ago.
In an old quarry, located on the Catskill Range in the US state of New York, the fossil remains of an ancient forest were discovered. The find is dated 386 million years old - the end of the Devonian period, the stormy time of the appearance of the first land vertebrates and even primitive tree-like plants. They became the direct ancestors and predecessors of the colossal forests of the next, Carboniferous period.
The roots of such gymnosperms were identified among the fossils. Scientists from the UK and the USA report this in an article published in the journal Current Biology. According to William Stein and his co-authors, the find pushes the time of the appearance of the first forests millions of years further into the past.
Remains of ancient plants have been found in a sandstone quarry near Cairo, New York since the 1960s, but some specimens have only become known in recent years, partially exposed due to erosion. Among them, scientists have identified fossilized fragments of the roots of Archaeopteris, early relatives of gymnosperms, as well as fern-like Eospermatopteris and another species, possibly related to lymphoids.
These plants are known to be among the very first trees on the planet. Archeopteris are the most "advanced" of them, and it is their appearance that the authors call "the beginning of future modern forests." These are the most ancient plants, which reliably had leaves of a structure and type familiar to us. Unlike the Eospermatopteris growing there and then, Archeopteris grew long specialized roots for the absorption of water and minerals.
In the vicinity of the remains of the ancient forest, fossilized bones of Late Devonian fish were found - apparently, in the Late Devonian this area was flooded from time to time. It was the deposition of sedimentary rocks, apparently, that allowed the preservation of unique samples.