00:03this might look like strangely textured stone but it's actually the fossilized remains of a
00:08prehistoric forest experts say this tree stump dates back some 390 million years when life
00:15on our planet was still stretching out onto land that means these are quite possibly the first
00:19trees to ever grow on dry soil and experts say they had a strange never-before-seen quark that
00:24let them do so the tree fossils were discovered in southwest england and they date back to the
00:29denovian period the forest in which these trees would have resided would not have looked anything
00:33like the ones we know today as grasses would not have existed on land yet the trees were also bizarre
00:38looking like this artist's rendering experts say the trunks of the trees were hollow with strands
00:43inside that brought water up from the ground and when they wanted to grow taller they would literally
00:47rip themselves apart tearing their own connective tissue as they reached up to a maximum height of
00:52just 13 feet with the study's co-author dr chris berry saying that there is no other tree in the
00:57history
00:57of the earth that has ever done anything as complicated as this explaining the tree simultaneously
01:03ripped its skeleton apart and collapsed under its own weight while staying alive and growing upwards
01:09and outwards to become the dominant plant of its day
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