QUICK FACTSName: Fossil Wooded area, DorsetLocation: West Lulworth, Dorset, EnglandCoordinates: 50.61646643547441, -2.241820971854925Why it is fantastic: The wooded area dates again to the overdue Jurassic, when dinosaurs nonetheless roamed Earth.The Fossil Wooded area in Dorset is a 145 million-year-old clump of lifeless timber at the Jurassic Coast — a 95-mile-long (153 kilometers) stretch of sea coast in southern England plagued by fossils courting to the Jurassic length (201 million to 145 million years in the past).The Fossil Wooded area holds one of the vital strangest fossils at the Jurassic Coast because of throngs of tiny, algae-like microbes that colonized the timber in a while once they died. Over the eons, those colonies trapped and encrusted debris of calcium carbonate onto the timber, construction residing mats of limestone referred to as thrombolites which might be nonetheless visual as of late.The now-fossilized wooded area grew all through the top of the Jurassic length, at a time referred to as the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary. All over this boundary, temperatures dropped and sea ranges fell, exposing recent land and forming coastal plains on which new existence, together with timber, may just thrive.Historical species of conifers, tree-ferns and cycads sprouted on what’s now the southern coast of England as the sea retreated.Comparable: 390 million-year-old fossilized wooded area is the oldest ever discoveredFlowering vegetation had now not but advanced at this level in Earth’s historical past, however dinosaurs would possibly neatly have roamed the wooded area, in line with the web page Geology of the Wessex Coast, which is administered via Ian West, a geologist and visiting scientist on the College of Southampton within the U.Okay.
The Fossil Wooded area sits on a cliff edge on England’s Jurassic Coast. (Symbol credit score: vaide by way of Getty Pictures)The wooded area was once short-lived as a result of sea ranges quickly rose once more, drowning the timber in salty water. However somewhat than rot away, the roots and trunks have been preserved via microbes. Sooner or later, the timber’ trunks broke off, leaving at the back of rounded mounds referred to as “algal burrs” that also take a seat at the sea coast and shape the Fossil Wooded area.Get the sector’s most enticing discoveries delivered directly on your inbox.A couple of tree trunks were discovered preserved alongside the Jurassic Coast, however none stay on the Fossil Wooded area website online. That is most probably as a result of guests in Victorian instances plundered them, in line with the Jurassic Coast Believe.The Fossil Wooded area’s algal burrs are situated midway up a cliff dealing with the English Channel. Many of the woody stays throughout the burrs belong to an historical form of cypress referred to as Protocupressinoxylon, and those stays are nonetheless rooted in prehistoric soil, West wrote on Geology of the Wessex Coast.As such, the Fossil Wooded area “supplies data on an historical surroundings during which overdue Jurassic dinosaurs lived,” West wrote.
