[Rockhounds] Alien-Looking Fossil Trees Uncovered in Canada: 'Unlike Any of Those That Live at the Present'

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

You won’t be-leaf the shape of this ancient tree. A team of researchers
found a 350-million-year-old fossilized tree species that looks like
something out of Dr. Seuss.

The fossils are some of the oldest-known trees and were discovered in what
was once an ancient lake in northeastern Canada. The species is called
*Sanfordiacaulis
densifolia* and would have taken up residence under the taller members of
the forest canopy. The earliest fossil trees
<https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1708241114> date back to the
late Devonian Period, and these—from the early Carboniferous—are just a few
million years younger. It’s not clear what *Sanfordiacaulis’ *closest
relations are on the tree of life (no pun intended), which means it’s *incertae
sedis—*an enigmatic taxa.

Dr. Seuss’ Truffula trees were probably inspired by a cypress tree that died
in 2019 <https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/16/us/lorax-tree-falls-trnd/index.html>,
but one could argue that these real-life trees were even more alien.
Research describing the ancient vegetation from leaf to trunk is published
<https://info.cell.com/e3t/Ctc/I1+113/c3j3g04/MX2sdbr5NLwW7rQvSg7MrwFTW7Kkhd558KHllN84393C3qgyTW7lCdLW6lZ3m1W4CLXDh9bVLdTW4x_WNh6MQFH8W7QCG9n8PXkBGW5_5bcM8yJtdxW6VMP0P4f-RlBW5lTmGZ2wfCF2W8dM7Xv6z-jnqN8WkVqKmCg4jW4SBj4b1-7D40W1mL-lJ6N1MjxW5ZY4qy9h4gpYW6nh7qW7STVSkN78lX8-FkThGW5xVrGG56tqjdW17yZKx7Fk80VW2KMLql2lN-BHW9hPmwk8WN4QqW4GRfTC1WBYhmW8QBYmZ2_WVwWW5xl7zX1xH6H2W56CrnG4j0lXqW21Wf658DB4hwW41TgTm64RnswVDlPNg1d509Gf3bcJHR04>
today
in Current Biology.

https://gizmodo.com/alien-looking-fossil-trees-uncovered-in-canada-unlike-1851218709