World’s Oldest Fossil Found in Upstate New York

When you hear headlines like "World's Oldest" or "World's Biggest," 98% of the time it is now where near the Capital Region, until now.

Of course, when we say "fossil," our brains go right to dinosaurs or wooly mammoths, and though in this case, we're not, it's still very cool for our area to be a part of history like this.

CNN has reported that evidence of the world's oldest forest that dates back to about 385 years has been found in Upstate New York. For context, this forest is about 140 million years older than the first dinosaurs.The fossilized roots were found in an abandoned quarry about 40 miles south of Albany in Cairo. The last "oldest forest" was supposedly not too far away in Gilboa, New York. This new forest is dated two or three million years older.

A person from the New York State Museum was the first person who saw the root-like structures in the ground. At first scientists just thought that it was remnants of a tree that was ripped out, until further inspection when they realized just how old the fossilized roots actually are.