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Science 24 June 2005:
Vol. 308. no. 5730, p. 1864
DOI: 10.1126/science.308.5730.1864c
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Figure 3 Fossil palm. Paleontologists this week got their best look yet at one of the world's first trees, a palmlike growth that flourished in a tropical environment in the middle Devonian Period, about 380 million years ago.

Only fragments were previously known of the tree, called Pseudosporochnus. But last summer, staff from the New York State Museum in Albany came across a 3-meter-long specimen in a gravel quarry near Conesville, New York--the first time the foliage has been found attached to the trunk. It is well preserved with a crown made up of frondlike branches. Although no roots are in evidence, "it gives us the first clear impression of what this tree looked like," says William Stein of the State University at Binghamton, New York, who is studying the fossil. "What really strikes me is how modern it is," says Stein, noting its leaflike branches. (Modern leaves had not yet evolved.) The fossil was described at the North American Paleontology Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, by New York state paleontologist Ed Landing.

CREDIT: GUSTAU NACARINO/REUTERS




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)