On the floor of an abandoned quarry in Cairo, New York, a research team discovered the fossilized remains of the ‘earliest’ known tree roots. The team said the site, supposedly 386 million years old, was once home to a forest of at least two types of trees with fern-like leaves: Eospermatopteris and Archaeopteris.

William Stein & Christopher Berry.

None of the root systems contain any of the original tree, but rather are trace fossils, indicating where the tree once briefly ‘stood’. Interestingly the exposed layer has scattered fragments of fish vertebrae and several well-preserved fish “recovered near the largest trees, seemingly impounded by them”. The research team proposed that as the flood water carried the fish and sediment to bury them it also wiped away the forest.

This proposal fits well with a biblical Flood interpretation. During the first half of the Noahic Flood, which occurred only 4,500 years ago, the prevailing waters fluctuated up and down due to waves, tides, and tectonic activity. A ripped-up floating forest carried by the Flood waters touched down on a newly formed sedimentary layer created by the Flood as the water briefly went down and exposed it. As the water level rose again, it wiped away the trees (later to be buried themselves and turned to coal), and rapidly deposited some of the fish in the sediment, which we now find as fossils.

• Stein, W.E. and 5 others, Mid-Devonian Archaeopteris roots signal revolutionary change in earliest fossil forests, Current Biology, 19 Dec 2019; cell.com.
• Foster, L., World’s oldest fossil tress uncovered in New York; bbc.co.uk, 19 Dec 2019.