This week we’re getting 'leafy', and going back to a time when Earth looked more like a sauna with trees!
Ferns have been around for over 350 million years, popping up long before dinosaurs started wandering about, and even before flowers were a thing! They flourished in the Carboniferous period (roughly 300 million years ago), when huge swampy forests covered the land - the same forests that eventually became the coal beds we now exploit.
Unlike fossils of hard things like bones, fern fossils are often impressions, like nature’s version of a print. A fern would fall onto soft mud, get buried, and over time the pressure and minerals in the area around it preserved its shape in the rock. Some even preserve the fine vein details in the leaves - like a prehistoric pressed flower!
This week I’ve sketched out a typical fossil fern frond, so you can see how the leaflets (called pinnae) fit along the stem (rachis). The symmetry and detail in some of these fossils is seriously impressive - and no two are quite the same.
Fun fact: Some ancient ferns like Neuropteris and Alethopteris grew in forests alongside giant dragonflies and millipede-like creatures the size of a dog. Imagine walking through that jungle...
If you’ve got a soft spot for ancient plant life, or just want a fossil that’s a bit more peaceful than teeth and claws - fossil ferns are a beautiful window into Earth’s greener past.
