Giant cladoxylopsid trees resolve the enigma of the Earth’s earliest forest stumps at Gilboa

William E. Stein (), Frank Mannolini, Linda VanAller Hernick, Ed Landing and Christopher M. Berry ()
Additional contact information
William E. Stein: Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York 13902-6000, USA
Frank Mannolini: New York State Museum, Albany, New York 12230, USA
Linda VanAller Hernick: New York State Museum, Albany, New York 12230, USA
Ed Landing: New York State Museum, Albany, New York 12230, USA
Christopher M. Berry: School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3YE, UK

Nature, 2007, vol. 446, issue 7138, 904-907

Abstract: Forest stump is crowned The evolution of the tree habit was fundamental to the Earth's terrestrial ecosystem. The earliest known evidence for forests consists of fossil tree stumps, about 385 million years old, from Gilboa in Upstate New York. These have been known since the 1870s and named 'Eospermatopteris'. But in the absence of the aerial portions of these trees, the affinities and significance of these stumps has remained unknown. Stein et al. now describe a spectacular tacular fossil tree from Schoharie County, New York, showing for the first time an intact crown belonging to a previously known plant type called Wattieza, attached to an Eospermatopteris trunk and base. This complete fossil of a tree-like fern provides the evidence needed for a detailed reconstruction of the appearance of the world's earliest forests.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05705 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:446:y:2007:i:7138:d:10.1038_nature05705

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature05705

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().