Oldest forest ever discovered had trees with roots like today's trees

[FfFfFfFF 58,133]

At three trillion strong, Earth’s trees are estimated to outnumber the stars in the Milky Way. These woody wonders sponge carbon dioxide out of the skies, brace soil against erosion, cycle water through ecosystems and support countless forms of life. And we largely have their sophisticated root systems to thank.

Sprouting from the base of tree trunks, roots are the arboreal equivalent of a digestive tract, exchanging water and nutrients with surrounding soils. In their modern forms, they helped trees dominate their habitats—and spread across the globe.

Now, new research from Berry and his colleagues suggests the modern versions of these stupendous structures are more deeply rooted in the arboreal family tree than ever thought before. Their team has uncovered Earth’s oldest known forest outside Cairo, New York, as detailed today in the journal Current Biology.

At 385 million years old, the ancient woodland predates the rise of seed-producing plants, a group that includes almost all living trees. The Paleozoic forest is also home to the remnants of intricate tree root systems that bear an uncanny resemblance to those still around today.

Trees, it seems, found their ideal rooting strategy early on—and have stuck with it ever since.

Digging deep into the soil, the pristinely preserved root remnants of the Cairo site looked, in other words, “strikingly modern, essentially what you’d see outside in my yard right now,” says William Stein, a paleobotanist at Binghamton University. 

Source - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/385-million-year-old-fossils-reveal-worlds-oldest-forest-had-modern-tree-roots-180973810/

[bionic 50,111]

Lets try and revive it  

[FfFfFfFF 58,133]

12 hours ago, bionic said:

Lets try and revive it  

I'm pretty sure it's impossible because all of trees' ADN must have degraded by now.  But at least we know that they weren't hugely different compared to modern trees.

[FfFfFfFF 58,133]

Besides the fossils of Archaeopteris (the tree with modern looking roots), Eospermatopteris were also growing there.