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Name : Fossil Forest , Dorset
Location : West Lulworth , Dorset , England
Fossilized tree stumps in the Fossil Forest in Dorset, England.
Coordinates:50.61646643547441 , -2.241820971854925
Why it ’s unbelievable : The forest date back to the late Jurassic , when dinosaurs still roamed Earth .
The Fossil Forest in Dorset is a 145 million - yr - onetime clustering of dead trees on the Jurassic Coast — a 95 - land mile - long ( 153 kilometer ) stretching of coastline in southerly England littered with fogey date to the Jurassic period ( 201 million to 145 million age ago ) .
The Fossil Forest sits on a cliff edge on England’s Jurassic Coast.
The Fossil Forest holds some of the unusual fossils on the Jurassic Coast thanks to throngs of tiny , algae - like microbe that colonize the trees briefly after they become flat . Over the eon , these colonies trapped and encrusted particles of atomic number 20 carbonate onto the trees , building living MAT of limestone called thrombolites that are still visible today .
The now - fossilized forest grow during the death of the Jurassic period , at a metre known as the Jurassic - Cretaceous boundary . During this bound , temperatures drop and sea spirit level fall , discover fresh ground and shape coastal plains on which new life , including tree , could thrive .
Ancient species of coniferous tree , tree - fern and cycad pullulate on what is now the southerly sea-coast of England as the ocean retreated .
Related:390 million - class - old fossilized timber is the quondam ever discovered
Flowering plant had not yet evolved at this point in Earth ’s chronicle , but dinosaur may well have tramp the forest , according to the websiteGeology of the Wessex Coast , which is run byIan West , a geologist and visiting scientist at the University of Southampton in the U.K.
The woods was short - be because ocean degree soon move up again , drowning the trees in salty water . But rather than rot away , the root and trunk were preserved by microbes . finally , the trees ' trunks broke off , leave behind rounded cumulus eff as " algal burr " that still sit on the coastline and form the Fossil Forest .
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A few tree torso have been found preserve along the Jurassic Coast , but none remain at the Fossil Forest site . This is likely because visitors in Victorian time plundered them , accord to theJurassic Coast Trust .
The Fossil Forest ’s algal burrs are located halfway up a cliff facing the English Channel . Most of the woody remains inside the burr belong to an ancient eccentric of cypress tree calledProtocupressinoxylon , and these corpse are still rooted in prehistorical soil , West wrote on Geology of the Wessex Coast .
As such , the Fossil Forest " provides information on an ancient environment in which late Jurassic dinosaurs survive , " West write .
