The Paleobotany Thread- Prehistoric plants, trees etc

Discovered near the town of Xinhang, China, the fossilized tree trunks date back to about 365 million years ago, and cover at least 2.7 million square feet, which is roughly the size of 47 American football fields. This means they now represent the oldest forest yet found in Asia,

These prehistoric trees would not have looked like the woody, branched plants that shade our modern landscape, instead growing as simple, straight stalks. Their root system, however, was a surprisingly advanced variety that paved the way for the swampy forests of the Carboniferous period, the buried remnants of which make up the vast majority of the coal humans burn today.

While the forest was expansive, the trees were probably relatively stumpy by modern standards. “It might be a forest that’s only as tall as we are,” she says.

Rubecula wrote: »

not often I can say this but those plant remains give me the sreaming abdabs