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Tree fossils reveal ancient climates

BRISTOL, England, May 6 (UPI) -- British scientists have found fossils of giant trees in 300 million-year-old rocks in Canada that give clues to Earth's ancient climate.

Scientists at Bristol University said the fossils also help establish the time when mountains first became forested, a finding they said has major implications for understanding global temperatures in the past and will help refine models of present-day climate change, BBC News Online reported.

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The fossils represent the oldest from upland forests ever documented. Towering nearly 150 feet in height, they were the ancestors of present-day conifers.

The discovery is important, the scientists said, because vegetation growing at high-altitudes is rarely preserved as fossils. Knowing when this happened is important because forests accelerate the rate at which rock is weathered, which in turn removes huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This causes global cooling -- a reverse of the greenhouse effect.

It seems likely, they said, the evolution of upland forests during Carboniferous times accelerated the rate that the mountains were weathering, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and leading to global cooling.

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