The first trees that lived on Earth were much more complex and intricate than the current ones. The study of fossils found in northwestern China from a 374 million-year-old tree revealed an interconnected network of woody "threads" in the trunk.
The first trees that lived on Earth were much more complex and intricate than the current ones. A study of fossils found in northwestern China from a 374-million-year-old tree revealed an interconnected web of woody "threads" in the trunk.
This revealed a much more complex structure than that of the trees that we find around us today. The filaments, also known as xylem, had the task of carrying water from the roots to the branches. In particular, the xylem is a plant tissue found in plants and serves for the conduction of the raw sap, that is of water and solutes, from the roots to the leaves.
In trees, the xylem consists of a single cylinder to which new rings are added every year under the bark. In some, particularly the palms, the xylem is formed by threads woven into softer fabrics that are distributed throughout the trunk.
In the new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists showed that the first trees, belonging to a group known as "cladoxlopsids", had the xylem formed by filament intricate external to the trunk of only 5 cm, while the half of the trunk was completely empty. These narrow bands were interconnected like a network.
The team, made up of researchers from Cardiff University, the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology and the State University of New York, also demonstrated that the development of these filaments allowed the growth overall of the tree. Instead of creating a anello of growth under the bark, the hundreds of individual threads grew creating their own rings, as if they were many small trees. As a result, the diameter of the trunk also expanded.
“There is no other tree I know of in the history of the Earth that has ever done something so complicated. The tree simultaneously tore its skeleton and collapsed under its own weight, keeping itself alive and growing upwards and outwards, ”explained Dr Chris Berry. “Studying these fossil extremely rare, we have gained an unprecedented insight into the anatomy of our first trees and their complex growth mechanisms ”.
This raises a question in scientists: why i more ancient trees were they more complicated?
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The next step in the study is to understand how much carbon dioxide these trees have absorbed from the atmosphere and how this has affected the Earth's climate.
Francesca Mancuso
