Rare Fossil Tree Discovery in Canada Rewrites Understanding of Tree Growth

KOMPAS.com – In the fossil record, trees that are preserved are usually only their trunks.

Meanwhile the leaves showing what the tree canopy looked like and its overall shape were not preserved.

Also read: The Secret to Trees Surviving for Thousands of Years

But now, in their new findings, researchers have succeeded in describing a fossil tree from New Brunswick, Canada with preserved leaves.

But instead of the leaves we commonly see today, their shape was surprising and unique, distorting our understanding of how trees grow.

Tree fossil

Quoting Phys, Monday (5/1/2024) the shape of this 350 million year old tree looks like a fern or palm.

The interesting thing is the leaves of the tree.

The functional leaves on ferns or palm trees are usually gathered at the top and are relatively few in number.

In contrast, the leaves of this tree called Sanfordiacaulis have more than 250 leaves around the trunk and each is up to 1.75 meters long from the trunk.

“The way this tree produces very long leaves around its thin trunk and the large number of leaves on a short trunk is surprising,” said Robert Gastaldo of Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Researchers then estimated that each leaf grew at least another meter before stopping.

“This means the tree has a dense leaf canopy that extends at least 5.5 meters around the trunk with a diameter of 16 centimeters,” explained Gastaldo.

Also read: How Do Trees Die and What Happens After?

The researchers’ findings provide important insights into plant evolution and arborescence, or plants that grow at least 4.5 meters at maturity.

It is also a reminder that throughout the history of life on Earth, there have been trees that looked different from anything we have ever seen before. Some of them even look like trees of imagination.

“We have a concept of trees that depends on where we live on this planet. Meanwhile, the fossils we found are a unique and strange form of growth in the history of life,” said Gastaldo.

“This is one of the evolutionary experiments in which forest plants are experiencing hatai diversification and the tree is a form that appears to be short-lived,” he added.

The tree fossils were preserved through a catastrophic earthquake that occurred along the edge of the rift lake.

The tree fossils were first unearthed about seven years ago from a quarry, but only included one partial sample.

It took several years to find four specimens of the same plant.

One of the specimens reveals how the leaves detach from the top of the tree, which makes it truly unique.

This is one of the few fossil records in which the stem is preserved and the corolla still attached.

Also read: What does the oldest tree in the world look like in Chile?

“Any tree fossil with an intact crown is a rarity in the history of life,” Gastaldo said.

Tree growth

Furthermore, the researchers also revealed that the tree most likely relies on its unusual growth form to maximize the amount of light it can capture and reduce competition with other plants on the ground.

Researchers also think Sanfordiacaulis represents the earliest evidence of small trees growing under the higher forest canopy.

This means that plant life in the Early Carboniferous period was more complex than expected, suggesting Sanfordiacaulis lived at a time when plants were experimenting with various possible forms.

“The history of life on land consists of plants and animals that are different from those living today,” said Gastaldo.

And the rare and unusual fossil of the Sanfordiacaulis tree is just one example.

The study was published in Current Biology.

Also read: Important for Life, How Many Trees Are There on Earth?

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2024-02-06 10:36:00
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