A forest from the time of dinosaurs was found in the USA: it stretched for 320 kilometers

More than 385 million years old

The oldest forest in the world is just a few minutes' drive from New York: it grew 385 million years ago and was inhabited by dinosaurs. Traces of a prehistoric forest have been found near the small American city of Cairo. The thicket stretched for more than 300 kilometers. Experts have discovered unusually ancient plant life in fossils.

Photo: freepik.com

The evolution of trees marked the beginning of a major change in the planet's climate as they extracted carbon dioxide from the air and created the atmosphere in which humans live today. Scientists have discovered the remains of an ancient fossil forest in a quarry in New York state. The research team was conducting core drilling in 2019 when the ancient forest was discovered. Researchers believe the forest was destroyed by flood after they discovered numerous fish fossils on the surface of the quarry.

The archaeological site was first discovered in 2009, and the team spent years analyzing the roots so they could accurately date the trees and understand the types of species that inhabited the forest. The rocks located in the forest are said to be 385 million years old.

«You are walking along the roots of ancient trees. Standing on the surface of the quarry, we can recreate the living forest around us in our imagination,” — Cardiff University paleobotanist Christopher Berry told Science.

Cardiff University reported that the forest landscape once extended beyond New York and Pennsylvania.

Scientists have said that the ancient rocks contain fossilized «tree roots» dozens of old trees, marking a “turning point in the history of the Earth,” Science reports.

Researchers say that the trees in the vast forest could reach 20 meters in height, and the trunks — up to 1.5 meters in diameter. The fossilized roots had horizontal radial patterns that radiated out from where vertical tree trunks once existed. The trunks are believed to belong to Archaeopteris, a type of tree with large woody roots and leaf-covered branches, according to modern biology.

Every tree found on the ancient earth reproduced by spores rather than seeds. Another type of tree known as cladoxylopsids, an extinct group of ferns, was also expected to be found in the forest. Another type of tree has also been discovered, but has yet to be identified.

Stanford University geologist Kevin Boyce noted that these particular trees in the Cairo Forest had a «major influence on ancient climate.»

An important process is known as weathering, which triggers chemical reactions that then pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into carbon ions found in groundwater. The groundwater then flows into the sea and is absorbed by the limestone.

“It is amazing to see plants that were previously thought to have mutually exclusive habitat preferences growing together in the ancient Catskill Delta,&rdash; noted Christopher Berry. He said they were able to drill into the fossil soil between the trees and explore geochemical changes in the soil.

Before the discovery of the archaic forest of Cairo, the Gilboa forest was the oldest, discovered in the late 19th century, according to the New York State Museum . The trees found there are known to be one of the first plants to appear on earth, reaching approximately 9 meters in height and resembling a fern without the wood. The Cairo Fossil Forest is not open to the public in order to preserve the land and use it for research