Early Trees Discovery

A recent discovery of a complete fossil sample of the world's oldest known trees has solved a botanical mystery and now gives an idea of the structure of the world's first forests.

In the late 1800s, fossil tree trunks were discovered in upstate New York that were identified as being between 390 and 350 million years old, among the world's oldest known trees (more accurate methods in recent years have dated the fossils to 385 million years ago, the oldest known). A member of the extinct plant order Cladoxylopsida (closely related to ferns and sphenopsids), the trunks were assigned to the genus Eospermatopteris. However, no fossil foliage or fruiting bodies accompanied the trunks. Subsequent discoveries of other cladoxylopsid fossils continued to yield only incomplete specimens – either trunks or foliage. This group included the fossil genus Wattieza, previously known only from foliage.

Two years ago, a discovery on the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation quarry in Schoharie County revealed a complete fossil that united the foliage of Wattieza with the trunk of Eospermatopteris, solving a botanical mystery.

The appearance of early forests is now easier to imagine, populated by (at least) 8m (26 ft.) tall tree-fern-like plants. They seem to have had naked trunks and bore a large crown of branches at the apex. The branches are thought to have abscised (dropped from the tree) as frond-like modules, allowing forest litter to accumulate and likely spurring the evolution of arthropod fauna.

• Stein, WE et al. 2007. Giant cladoxylopsid trees resolve the enigma of the Earth's earliest forest stumps at Gilboa. Nature. 446: 904-907. doi:10.1038/nature05705
• Full fossil found for the earliest trees by Heidi Ledford for news@nature.com
• Oldest tree fossil found, scientists say via CBC News
• Fossilised trees mystery solved via BBC News (note: the image accompanying the article bizarrely does not include the trunk)
• World's First Tree Reconstructed via LiveScience (note: this includes a pencil-drawn image of the entire plant)

Thanks to Peter Wharton and Aussiebob@UBC Botanical Garden Forums for submitting this item.

Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:29 PM on April 19, 2007

Want to talk about this weblog entry? As of August 22, 2006, all new entries and most older entries are cross-posted to the UBC Botanical Garden Discussion Forums for discussion (you might need to use the search function to find the thread you are looking for).

This is an effort to reduce the amount of time spent dealing with spam (the forums are very good at stopping spam, the weblog commenting system is not so good).

Older entries already containing comments remain open for discussion.