In southwest England, fossil specimens of a forest have been discovered that are 390 million years old. They were found in the Hangman Sandstone Formation in southwest England.
The forest is made up mostly of cladoxylopsids, a close relation to ferns and horsetails. They look kind of like palms but are not related to them. Darren Orf, who wrote an article about the discovery, said information about the discovery was published in a February 2024 issue of the Journal of the Geological Society.
The climate in England 390 million years ago was quite different than it is today. It was warmer and drier back then. Dinosaurs had not yet shown up. It would be 150 million more years before they arrived on the scene.
Though this forest is the oldest discovered so far, older trees existed. A University of Bristol study in 2018 revealed that the oldest trees showed up about 500 million years ago.
The discovery of the fossil forest in southwest England is four million years older than a fossil forest in New York. Since 2019 it had been thought to be the oldest known forest in the world. It is called the Gilboa Fossil Forest.
Paleobotanists found the starting point of the ancient Gilboa forest in an abandoned quarry in Cairo, New York. Their discovery was contained in 386-million-year-old rocks. What they found was the remains of Archaeopteris. It had a large woody root system, and its branches had leaves.
When ancient forests appeared, CO2 levels dropped on the planet to about what they are today. Oxygen the trees produced made it possible for more complex life, such as humans and dinosaurs, to form.
Who knows when the next evidence of an ancient forest even older than the ones in southwest England and Cairo, New York will be found. Maybe students in elementary school right now will make that discovery when they grow up.