Shawna Williams,Scientist
During the Devonian period, from about 420 million to 359 million years ago, and complex terrestrial plant life really took off. The first rooted plants evolved,and by the conclude of the period, forests had colonized the environment, and sucking up huge amounts of carbon,driving down global temperatures, and creating an entirely new kind of ecosystem.
Fossils of those first trees, and cladoxylopsids,can still be seen in places such as Gilboa in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, where stumps up to 2 meters in diameter beckon visitors to assume what the soil might have looked like back before the...
Source: realclearscience.com