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EXTREMELY RARE THREE DIMENSIONAL COMPLETE LEPIDODENDRON STALK SECTION Svoge, West Bulgaria CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD: 320 million years ago Lepidodendron fossils are usually nothing more than a fragment of a flat bark imprint in broken rock. Stem sections are rare in three dimension. This fantastic and highly rare specimen not only has a highly unusual Bulgarian provenance but it is a complete three dimensional section of a stalk of the Carboniferous lycopod, Lepidodendron aculeatum. When buried, this stalk was partially flattened like a dandelion stem but no matrix is attached and the bark detail is evident around the entire surface! Dating from the Carboniferous Period 320 million years ago, the Lepidodendron was a tree-sized club moss. The rich charcoal color of this fossil wonderfully displays the detail still intact. To wrap your hand around this stem section is like traveling back in time hundreds of millions of years ago and feeling the forest! Even if you have no interest in plant fossils, it would be hard not to be speechless in the presence of this spectacular piece. It offers a very rare glimpse on a large scale of what these towering club mosses in the swamp forests looked like over 300 million years ago! During the Carboniferous Period, a large portion of Europe and North America was on the equator. The warm and consistently humid climate was ideal for the growth of extensive swampy forests. The Paralic Basin was the largest Carboniferous basin which comprised regions of what are now Ireland, England, northern France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany (Ruhr District) and Poland. Periodic changes in the sea levels caused the rivers that traversed these forests to flood, depositing massive amounts of sand and mud thereby burying the forest along the banks. In a period of one million years, several thousand meters of sediment would be deposited, densely packing and pressing the abundant vegetation into flattened rock fossil impressions. The most common vegetation in these forests were Sigillaria and Lepidodendron. Lepidodendron and Sigillaria are lycopods, or more commonly known as club mosses. They belong to the lycophytes group, today only represented by a handful of small herbaceous forms. While they were giant tree-sized plants, Lepidodendron and Sigillaria are not actually classified as trees but are very unique types of plants that died out hundreds of millions of years ago. Both grew to amazing heights exceeding 100 feet with stems over 6 feet in diameter! Their branches were draped with long, grass-like foliage of spirally arranged leaves and cones containing spores. Lepidodendron is famous for its unmistakable scale-like bark. The plant was anchored at the base not be a deep root system but by several shallow running Y-shaped branches called stigmaria. The upper branches at the top of the plant terminated in cigar-shaped cones called Lepidostrobus. Depending on the specific species of Lepidodendron, these cones contained either small or large spores, or both. The presence of Lepidodendron fossils suggest a very hot and humid environment existed where they once thrived. SUPER RARE SPECIMEN FROM EXOTIC LOCATION - A COMPLETE STALK SECTION WITH ENTIRE CIRCUMFERENCE IN THREE DIMENSIONAL FORM WITH BARK DETAIL! 8" in length x 4.5" wide SOLD PL-002 STAND INCLUDED Actual Item - One Only |
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