The world’s oldest known fossil forest has been discovered in a sandstone quarry in town of Cair in New York state.
- The forest would have spanned from New York to Pennsylvania and beyond, and has been dated to about 386m years old. The latest fossil find was just 40 kilometres away from what was previously considered the oldest forest in the world, beating the record by at least two million years.
- It is one of only three known fossil forests dating to this period and about 2-3m years older than the previously oldest known fossil forest at Gilboa, also in New York state.
- Discovered by chance in 2009, these extremely rare webs of fossilised roots, some of which are nearly 11 metres (36 ft) wide, mark the spot where some of the first woody trees once stood. Many of these long woody roots are thought to belong to plants of the Archaeopteris genus, an ancestor of today’s modern trees and one of the first to capture and store carbon dioxide from the air with its flat green leaves
