Oldest Fossilized Forest Found: A 390-Million-Year Record

Scientists have discovered the world’s oldest fossilised forest on the UK coastline, dating back 390 million years. The forest, composed of calamophyton trees, reveals how early plants shaped landscapes and stabilised riverbanks and coastlines.

The discovery of the world’s oldest fossilised forest on the UK coastline has stunned scientists and shed new light on the evolution of plants and landscapes. The fossils, found on the high sandstone cliffs in South West England’s Devon and Somerset Coast, date from 390 million years ago, during the Devonian Period. They are about four million years older than the previous record holder in New York State.

The trees of the fossilised forest

The fossils belong to a type of tree called calamophyton, which resembled palm trees but had thin and hollow trunks and no leaves. The trees grew densely packed, reaching heights of two to four metres, and dropped lots of twigs on the ground. The researchers identified fossils of plants and their debris as well as fossilised tree logs and traces of roots.

The impact of the fossilised forest on the environment

The study, published in the Journal of the Geological Society, shows how these early trees helped shape landscapes and stabilised riverbanks and coastlines hundreds of millions of years ago. The researchers say that the area of the find was at the time a semi-arid plain, attached not to England, but to parts of Germany and Belgium, where fossils of such trees have also been found.

The significance of the fossilised forest for science

“This was a pretty weird forest – not like any forest you would see today,” said Prof Neil Davies from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, the study’s first author. “There wasn’t any undergrowth to speak of and grass hadn’t yet appeared, but there were lots of twigs dropped by these densely packed trees, which had a big effect on the landscape.”

The researchers say that little is known about the world’s earliest forests and that their discovery reveals a key stage in Earth’s development, when rivers started to operate in a fundamentally different way than they had before, becoming the great erosive force they are today.

“When I first saw pictures of the tree trunks I immediately knew what they were, based on 30 years of studying this type of tree worldwide,” said co-author Dr Christopher Berry from Cardiff’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “It was amazing to see them so near to home. But the most revealing insight comes from seeing, for the first time, these trees in the positions where they grew.”

The researchers say that their findings demonstrate that British rocks still have important new discoveries to offer and that revisiting them can yield valuable insights into the history of life on Earth.

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