Discovery of fossils from the oldest forest on Earth

Calamophyton

March 10, 2024 10:16 p.m. Robert Klatt

To date, the oldest trace of forest on earth has been discovered in England. Middle Devonian fossils show that life on Earth increasingly changed and spread across land during this time.

Cambridge (England). Researcher of University of Cambridge Neil Davies and his team discovered the oldest traces of forest on earth in England, on what are now the coasts of Devon and Sussex. According to the publication in Journal of the Geological Society The remains discovered date back at least 386 million years. Researchers say the fossil plant remains surprised them because there are virtually no finds from that era. The previous record holder from the US state of New York has been surpassed by four million years.

According to paleontologists, the fossils belong to the Calamophyton group of palm-like plants. Calamophytons are actually more related to ferns and had hollow trunks and, instead of larger leaves, many thin branches through which plant photosynthesis took place. Compared to today’s trees, Calamophyton were significantly smaller. Their crowns reached a maximum height of four meters.

Middle Devonian fossils

Determination of the age of the remains shows that the fossils date from the Middle Devonian, a time when life on Earth increasingly moved from the seas to land. In the Devonian, seed plants appeared, among other things, and evolution led many invertebrates to adapt to life on land.

“The Devonian period fundamentally changed life on Earth. It also changed the way water and land interacted, as trees and other plants stabilized sediment with their root systems, but little is known about the very earliest forests.

According to researchers, the Devonian period is the first period in Earth’s history in which plants formed forests on land. However, these differed significantly from today’s forests because they contained neither grass nor undergrowth. The landscape was rather characterized by numerous branches fallen from the trees.

Journal of the Geological Society, doi: 10.1144/jgs2023-204