Gilboa Fossils Earthcache
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A roadside display of the Gilboa Fossils. These fossils are from some of the oldest trees on earth.
Much of the evidence for what is known about terrestrial life during the Devonian period in North America has come from some extraordinary fossils discovered in Gilboa, Schoharie County over the last 150 years. The Gilboa Museum, one-half mile from NYS Route 30, has some of the world’s oldest fossilized trees on display, along with a mural depicting Devonian Dawn, and photos and artifacts from the original village of Gilboa before it was condemned to construct the Schoharie Reservoir, completed in 1925. An outdoor fossil exhibit is on display along Route 990V not far from the museum. The display has several large, fossilized tree stumps with an information kiosk.
The fossils on display were uncovered in the early 1920s, during construction of New York City's Schoharie Reservoir by the Hugh Nawn Contracting Company, the contractor for the reservoir. The fossils, some of the only survivors of their type in the world, are remnants of Earth's earliest forests. According to Dr. Robert Titus of SUNY Oneonta, the trees are essentially big ferns with woody stems whose descendants evolved into cone-bearing, evergreen trees. They were located along the coast of an inland sea that covered what is now the southern part of New York and western Pennsylvania. Winifred Goldring, a New York State paleobotanist who went on to become the first woman State Paleontologist, analyzed these fossils and ultimately supervised the construction of the "Gilboa forest restoration" in the old State Museum in Albany that opened in 1925. The fossils being moved were part of a 1927 outdoor exhibit near a quarry site that provided stones for construction of the Gilboa Dam, which impounds the Schoharie Reservoir. Other fossil trees from the site were sent to institutions in Europe and South America.
The abundance and often superb preservation of fossils form Gilboa have made this area one of the most important Devonian fossil localities in the world.
A more recent discovery has shed more light on the origins of these fossils.
(text below taken from; Journal Features Gilboa Trees; The Oneonta Daily Star 4/20/07)
The answer to an ancient puzzle buried in a quarry in Gilboa was finally revealed when Nature, a leading international journal of science, reported the discovery of fossils of Earths oldest tree by two researchers at the New York State Museum. Linda VanAller Hernick, the museums paleontology collection manager and one of the co-authors of the Nature paper and her colleague Frank Mannolini, paleontology collection technician, found the trees intact crown in 2004 and a 28-foot-long trunk in 2005 in a quarry near Gilboa.
The crown and trunk have been pieced together to represent Wattieza, which resembles a modern-day tree fern. Nature reported that the 380-million-year-old "stunning specimens" found in Schoharie County mark the first time paleontologists have seen the upper portions of this Devonian Period tree rather than just the stumps.
The Gilboa stumps have been "widely cited as evidence of the Earths oldest forest"
Hernick said the crown indicates that the early trees were "pretty basic, like big sticks with a bunch of branches on top. They had no real leaves, just a lot of little branchlets that kept dividing and getting smaller. They looked kind of like bottle brushes."
In 2003, the State Museum published a book by Hernick, "The Gilboa Fossils." Complete with photos and drawings, the book chronicles the history and significance of the fossils.
Hernick and Mannolini made their first discovery while they were searching for fossils in a small Department of Environmental Conservation sandstone quarry, according to a news release from the New York State Museum.
Since the discovery, Hernick and Mannolini have worked with their co-authors, state paleontologist Ed Landing and paleobotanists William Stein, associate professor of biology at Binghamton University, and Christopher M. Berry, a paleobotany lecturer at Cardiff University in Wales.
Landing, who studied the geology of the area where the fossils were found, said he thinks that when the trees died, they fell over, became waterlogged as they traveled down a small stream, and sank to the bottom at the foot of a small delta that formed in standing water. Layers of fossilized trees were found intertwined like pickup sticks in an underwater log jam in the quarry.
"The trees preceded dinosaurs by 140 million years," Landing said in the release. "There was nothing flying, no reptiles and no amphibians."
To claim credit for the Earthcache answer 3 questions. These can only be answered by going to the fossil display.
Look at the fossil sitting by itself.
1. In what year was this fossil found?
2. Who found it?
On the main display, measure the height of the tallest fossil (try not to touch the fossil while measuring)
3. What is the height of the tallest fossil?
Extra credit: These fossils are 380 million years old;
Name some other life forms (plant or animal) that were on the earth at that time (Devonian period)
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