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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

An ancient tree’s oddball shape is revealed by an extraordinary fossil

Many fossilized trees consist of only the trunk, but a specimen from Canada includes most of the crown of leaves.
Sanfordiacaulis model with simplified branching structure

Sanfordiacaulis densifolia (artist’s interpretation), which grew roughly 350 million years ago, had a slender trunk topped by a crown of long leaves. Credit: Tim Stonesifer

Fossils of early trees are scarce, and specimens that include the tree’s crown are even scarcer. But Robert Gastaldo at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and his colleagues analysed just such a fossil, which had been discovered in New Brunswick, Canada, and found that the crown of leaves had a surprising structure1.

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Nature 626, 459 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00317-z

References

  1. Gastaldo, R. A. et al. Curr. Biol. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.011 (2024).

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