World's First Tree Reconstructed »

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  pawfoots

  April 18, 2007, 3:04 p.m.

  Very interesting story and awesome how they can "reconstruct" how the old trees used to appear.
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  endofdays

  April 19, 2007, 11:34 a.m.

  Really cool. Short article, but very informative.

  For instance, I didn't know ferns were the only trees to reproduce using spores.

  And I never realized how critical the development of terrestrial flora was to the eventual proliferation of fauna.

  And it never occurred to me that there was once a world that belonged solely to plants. -No insects or animals of any kind.

  To think that for 385 million years species of plants and animals have come and gone, some flourishing for millions of years. And all the while the earth continued to support and sustain all that life.

  Enter: Man. In less than one million years (really, in just the last four or five hundred) we've managed to push our planet to the breaking point.

  If I were the earth I would want to rid myself of all human life as quickly as possible and start over with something less destructive. I would look at Mankind as some kind of disease - like flesh-eating bacteria.
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  edromar2

  April 19, 2007, 1:09 p.m.

  First, these were not the first trees, just the first we have good evidence for. Other excessive assertions are claims such as the claim that we know there was nothing flying. Had some light and small invertebrates developed the abilities to fly or float, like jelly fish in the air, their failure to fossilize would have left us unaware of their past existence. All we can say is that we have no eviden ce of such.

  If scientific study has shown us anything, it is that there has been and is more in heaven and earth, past and present, than we had ever dreamed of in our nightmares before we came upon the evidence. So why not admit that there might have been equally strange extremes that left no evidence. And qit our arrogant claims to know more than we ever can or will?

  Appearances can be deceiving. Don't forget that these plants which apparently were already in great, thick forests by then and who knows what had proceeded them, were in a very different air.

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