Earth’s earliest forest revealed in Somerset fossils

A reconstruction of a Calamophyton forest, where trees drawn measure 2-3 meters high. Credit Peter Giesen/Chris Berry - Scientists have discovered remnants of the Earth's oldest fossil forest on the north coast of Devon and Somerset in the UK. The trees, which are around 390 million years old, are thought to have grown as part of an extensive forest covering the east coast of the Old Red Sandstone continent - part of Europe at that time. This makes the Somerset forest four to five million years older than the previous record holder at Cairo, New York in the US. Discovered by researchers from Cambridge University and identified at Cardiff University, the fossils show incomplete trunks up to two meters long, together with small branches, of a pioneering type of tree called cladoxylopsids. Cladoxylopsids dominated terrestrial ecosystems for a period of about five million years before the advent of more modern woody trees about 385 million years ago, according to the team. Their findings, presented in the Journal of the Geological Society , throw new light on the evolution of trees and the transformative role they played in shaping the world we live in today.