Scientists have discovered proof of the existence of the oldest forests in the world beneath new York. It existed about 400 million years ago.
The forest, which had become fossils and which 386 million years, was found in a quarry in 33 miles South of Albany, in new York, according to a new study.
About the discovery reported in the latest issue of the scientific journal Current Biology, and it is believed that the forest was found by 3 million years older than the previous world record, which is about 25 miles from the mountain range of Gilboa.
The researchers said that the recent finding provides new evidence concerning the evolution of forests, indicating that the transition of the planet to forests really began over 10 million years before the trees started to grow from seed.
«Now we are literally unable to understand the transfer of Land to a forest planet»,- said one of the study’s authors Dr Chris berry from Cardiff University in the UK.
Scientists believe that the forest was home to different species of trees that reproduce using seeds and spores, and grows a large range of vegetation that eventually were destroyed by the flood.
«It’s amazing to see the plants as once thought, are mutually exclusive habitat, growing together in ancient sedimentary rocks of the Catskill-Clastic»,- said the scientist.
The forest was populated by 2 different types of trees – primitive fern plants, known as cladoselache and Archaeopteris, which are characterized by wooden trunks and leaf-like branches.
«It looked like a quite rare Les with small and medium height trees resembling conifers, with individual and grouped plants of smaller size, reminiscent of ferns and growing between them,» said berry.
The study also describes the «amazing» roots that belonged to Archaeopteris. Them at different levels were branches and small, short-lived, similar to the branch roots, which researchers attributed to the transformation of the relationship between plants and soil.
«To truly understand how the trees began to absorb from the atmosphere the carbon dioxide that we need to study the ecology and habitat of the earliest forests, and their root system,» explained the scientist.
Professor, Binghamton University William Stein, the lead author of the study, said the team plans to keep looking in the region of the Catskills-Clastic and compare their findings with petrified forests worldwide.
«I think around the world many of these forests are preserved in the fossil soil,» he said. «And I would like to know what happened in those centuries not just in the Catskills-Clastic, but everywhere.»
