Scientists have discovered fossils of very old trees in the state of Parana (Brazil).
The latter, belonging to a forest 290 million years old before the arrival of the dinosaurs, offer a "window on the past" to study the evolution of plants.
The discovered fossilized forest is composed of 164 lycophyte trees (without fruits, flowers or seeds) of a variety that has already disappeared.
It is the "most important in the southern hemisphere" in terms of quantity and quality of preservation, according to Brazilian geologist Thammy Mottin.
Exceptional conservation
“These plants represent very primitive life forms in the history of the earth”, continues the scientist.
The forest, which grew near the current town of Ortigueira, "shows how the first plants spread, how they were distributed in space and what their interactions were" with other forms of life.
The exceptional conservation of this forest was made possible by the fact that the trees "were buried when they were still alive, then gradually covered with sediment", explains Thammy Mottin.
The forest was then “kept almost as is” after being covered by a flooding river that froze.
A few rare similar discoveries had already taken place in the southern hemisphere, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul or in Argentine Patagonia, but all of much smaller dimensions.
Discovered at the end of 2018, the fossilized forest of Parana was the subject of a long study published last February in the journal
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
.
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Forest
Brazil
Tree
Paleontology
plants
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