World’s earliest forest discovered near Butlin’s in Somerset

Scientists have found what they believe to be the world’s earliest known fossilised forest in cliffs on the coast of South West England. Researchers from Cambridge and Cardiff Universities say they are the oldest fossilised trees ever found in Britain. The trees, known as calamophyton, resemble palm trees. Early trees helped shape landscapes and stabilised riverbanks and coastlines hundreds of millions of years ago.

Co-author Dr Christopher Berry from Cardiff’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences said it was ‘amazing’ to see them so near to home. He has spent 30 years studying this type of tree worldwide. The fossil forest is about four million years older than the previous record holder in New York State. It was found in the Hangman Sandstone Formation along the Devon and Somerset coasts.

It dates back to the Devonian Period, between 419 and 358 million years ago, the time of life’s big expansion onto land. The area of the find was at the time a semi-arid plain, attached not to England, but to parts of Germany and Belgium, where fossil of such trees have also been found. The period is named after Devon because of marine rocks emblematic of the period, which geologists found off the coast.

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