The first trees, which appeared on Earth between 400 and 350 million years ago, had bizarre shapes, very different from the current ones and reminiscent of large down jackets, with very long leaves starting from the top of the trunk: this is indicated by the discovery of leaf fossils still tied to the trunk of a plant.
According to the reconstruction, published in the journal Current Biology by Robert Gastaldo of Colby College in Waterville, the tree had a large canopy of very long leaves almost two and a half meters long.
The appearance of trees on Earth dates back to just over 400 million years ago, but we know very little about their shape since there are few fossil remains, mostly trunks of which the hardest parts have been preserved.
“Any fossil tree with an intact canopy is a rarity,” Gastaldo said, and that's why the Sanfordiacaulis fossils discovered in New Brunswick, Canada, offer a whole new look.
In fact, both a portion of the trunk and some leaves have been preserved and this has allowed us to reconstruct the appearance of that primitive tree, which lived 350 million years ago: it had a trunk about 5 meters high and 16 centimeters wide, from the top of the which produced hundreds of leaves up to 2 and a half meters long.
A particularly unusual shape compared to today's trees and which indicates how in the past primitive trees had shapes and structures unknown to us.
Probably, the researchers add, the Sanfordiacaulis had this shape to capture a large amount of light and reduce competition with other plants on the ground in an era of great 'experiments'.
“The history of life on earth consists of different plants and animals than those living today,” Gastaldo said.
“Rare and unusual fossils, like the New Brunswick tree, are but one example – he concluded – of what has colonized our planet.
But it was a failed experiment."
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