March 2010 – Redcar Submerged Forest
During the Carboniferous period 320 million years ago a large portion of Europe and North America were on the equator. The warm and humid climate was perfect for swampy forests. Occasionally the rivers...
Read More ...
Comment here if you like this plugin.
April – Stigmaria
During the Carboniferous period 320 million years ago a large portion of Europe and North America were on the equator. The warm and humid climate was perfect for swampy forests. Occasionally the rivers running through the forests would flood and deposit sand and mud around the base of these plants, burying them whole, the perfect conditions to be preserved as a fossil.
Stigmaria are the remains of the roots of large tree like plants. It is a generic name for the roots and the plants could have been Lepidodendron, Lepidophloios and Sigillaria, which were tall Lycopods, often described as club mosses They could be over 30m tall and have a diameter of 2m. Their branches were draped with long grass like foliage of spirally arranged leaves and cones.
The roots of these plants were shallow branching hollow tubes. This fossil is the internal cast of one of these tubes. The dimples on the surface are the nodes that would have had a ribbon like rootlet attached.