🌿 PREHISTORIC PLANTS: BEFORE TREES EXISTED
PAGE 1 OF 5, THE DEVONIAN WORLD: NO TREES YET
420 MILLION YEARS AGO
A WORLD WITHOUT TREES
Walk across the early Devonian Earth and you would see… almost nothing tall. The landscape is barren red rock stretching to the horizon. No rustling canopy overhead. No forest shade. The tallest "plant" you'd find stands only a few centimetres high, a strange, leafless green stick called Cooksonia. That's it. That was the whole plant kingdom on land. Trees did not exist. The word hadn't been invented yet.
BARREN!
COOKSONIA
🌱 First vascular plant, 430 million years old
📏 Barely 10 cm tall, no leaves, no roots
📏 Barely 10 cm tall, no leaves, no roots
FOSSIL RECORD
🪨 Devonian fossils tell the whole story
🔬 Preserved in rock for 400 million years
🔬 Preserved in rock for 400 million years