Tropical New Brunswick home to Dr. Seuss-like tree from around 350 million years ago
CTV
An enigmatic fossil uncovered seven years ago in a New Brunswick quarry has been found to reveal an extinct tree with a narrow trunk and a top like a pompom, a remnant from a time before dinosaurs walked the Earth.
An enigmatic fossil uncovered seven years ago in a New Brunswick quarry has been found to reveal an extinct tree with a narrow trunk and a top like a pompom, a remnant from a time before dinosaurs walked the Earth.
A paper published last week in the journal Current Biology opens a window into a world of plants during the Carboniferous period, when New Brunswick was a tropical land within 10 degrees of the equator.
Matt Stimson, one of the authors of the study, who works at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, said the plant is from a time of flux when flora and fauna were starting to adapt and diversify on land.
The tree was a "failed experiment of evolution" and didn't survive, but he said it helps researchers understand the complexity of forests. And finding an intact fossilized tree is unusual, he added.
"This is very rare -- and by very rare, only a few have ever been found in ... the whole of the fossil record," he said. "Not just at this time, but anywhere in geological time, where the stem, the branches, the leaves are attached and complete."
The fossil was found in 2017 in a quarry in Norton, N.B., about 80 kilometres southeast of Fredericton. Before publishing, the researchers had to verify their discovery and make sure the science was accurate and that they had actually found something brand new, he said.
"Ultimately science takes time. Big claims require big proof."
