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Fossilized Roots Of A Very Big Tree

300 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period in what is now Hoover. Towering over a swampy environment were trees called Lycopods. Some grew to 180 feet tall and trunks measuring a whopping 6 feet. Anchoring those ancient trees were an extensive root system called Stigmaria. Here are pictures of those root fossils embedded in sedimentary layers at the Riverchase rock/road cut that I mentioned in the beginning of this blog.

The drawing above created by Sherrie Shepard shows a Lepidodendron known as the "scale tree". It was one of many giants that towered over a Carboniferous Swamp and the roots that anchored them in the swampy environment.

The below picture shows a some detail of the rootlet. The small nodes on the side is where small hairlike rootlets reached into the soil to feed the big tree with nutrients.


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