New Scientist
Image: Jinzhuang Xue
It was one of the first examples of geoengineering: when plants began to colonise the land they stabilised sediments, generated soils and greened the planet.
Now we have a window on the process, thanks to a spectacular rock formation in South China, showing some of the oldest known fossils of early root-like systems from 20 million years before the first forests grew.
When researchers look at the greening of the primeval continents they tend to focus on the appearance of trees with deep roots that could enhance the weathering of rock and allow thick, rich soils to form. But this was the final part of the process: the first trees grew about 390 million years ago, tens of millions of years after plants first colonised land.
Jinzhuang Xue at Peking University in Beijing, China, says that even before the evolution of deep-rooted trees, some plants could stabilise thick piles of sediment to generate proto-soils. Read more on newscientist.com…
