While fossil trees date back to over 380 million years, a new study reveals that the oldest fossilized trees to be discovered are in upstate New York. A journal Current Biology contains a study according to which the oldest fossil forests have been found in the Catskill area of the state near Cairo. The experts from the U.K. and New York started looking in the area more than ten years ago.
The research was performed by experts from Cardiff University at the U.K., Binghamton University in New York, and the New York State Museum. Experts had different thoughts over the discovery and communicated to various media channels on this hard and valuable discovery.
Here is what experts think
Paleobotanist Dr. Chris Berry at Cardiff University, also a co-author of the study, says that the place where they found the oldest Fossil trees is the place where you walk down and map out the presence of fossil trees in the halfway through of the Devonian era. He believes that the forest is very ancient; it is from the beginning of the time when the planet was turning green and forests started to be formed. All the greenery was becoming the regular part of the earth’s system.
Well, we think that the woods that date back to 380 million years have been wiped out from the surface due to floods, and what was found during the study by the researchers was fish fossils. Instead, it showed some critical evolution of the forest that we generally see in the modern seed plants. The trees exhibited an advanced root system that was proof of the origin of the intricate root system.
Patricia Gensel, a paleobotanist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, an active researcher on the study, told the media this discovery had pushed back the origins of the root system back in time. She further explains that by the mid-Devonian time, there had been a significant development in the trees that we have been able to track. Before this time, there have been no substantial records and researches about the trees.
The experts declared that they believe that the forest has once been big enough to have spread out of Pennsylvania.
The conclusion
Researchers, experts, and environmentalists have a single message for you. Having the trees is a fantastic thing, and this also contributes to revealing new secrets of nature with each finding and study. Environmentalists and experts urge you to save the forests. Burning forests and deforestation is going to affect human lives. The saving forest will save human beings.