Petrified Tree Up to 20 Million Years Old Found Intact in Lesbos

Petrified Tree Up to 20 Million Years Old Found Intact in Lesbos. A fossilised tree trunk in the petrified forest of Lesbos. Photograph: Nikolas Zouros

Discovery of 19.5-metre tree with roots, branches and leaves is unprecedented, say experts

Greek scientists on the volcanic island of Lesbos say they have found a rare fossilized tree whose branches and roots are still intact after 20 million years.

The tree was found during roadwork near an ancient forest petrified millions of years ago on the eastern Mediterranean island and transported from the site using a special splint and metal platform.

It is the first time a tree has been found in such good condition complete with branches and roots since excavations began in 1995, said Professor Nikos Zouros of the Museum of Natural History of the Petrified Forest of Lesbos.

“It is a unique find,” he said. “[It] is preserved in excellent condition and from studying the fossilized wood we will be able to identify the type of plant it comes from.”

Lesbos’ petrified forest, a 15,000-hectare, UNESCO-protected site, is the result of a volcanic eruption 20 million years ago which smothered the island’s then subtropical forest ecosystem in lava.

The fossilized tree, about 19 metres long, was preserved by a thick layer of volcanic ash after it fell. A large number of fruit tree leaves were found in the same spot, adding to the picture along with animal bones from the general area.

“During the excavations the various forests that existed between 17 and 20 million years ago on Lesbos are being uncovered and we can reconstruct the ecosystem that existed during that period,” said Zouros.

Excavations by his 35-strong team along a 20km highway connecting Sigri with Kalloni, the region’s biggest town, since 2013 have yielded more than 15 significant fossil sites but the earlier finds have paled next to the most recent.

The discovery of an entire tree lying on a bed of leaves was not only unprecedented but down to pure luck. “Constructors were about to asphalt that part of the highway when one of our technicians noticed a tiny branch. The road work stopped, we starting excavating and quite quickly realised we had chanced upon an incredible find,” said Zouros. “It will now form part of the open-air museum we intend to create.”

Geologists around the world have described the find as a breakthrough. “We have a case of extraordinary fossilisation in which a tree was preserved with its various parts intact. In the history of paleontology, worldwide, it’s unique,” said the Portuguese palaeontologist Artur Abreu Sá. “That it was buried by sediments expelled during a destructive volcanic eruption, and then found in situ, makes it even more unusual.”

The climate emergency has highlighted the need to understand ecosystems in a hotter future if global temperatures are not reduced and, as such, Lesbos’s petrified forest offers an invaluable window into the past, said Prof Iain Stewart, who directs the Sustainable Earth Institute at the University of Plymouth.

“It’s a world-class place to look at the type of environment that existed 20m years ago,” he told the Guardian. “Finds like these are a window into a particular past, a greenhouse, hothouse world, that existed back then. They might be an indication of what is coming if we don’t get our act together in tackling the climate change emergency.”

In more recent times, Lesbos has been better known for the thousands of refugees who have landed on its shores but the island’s unusually diverse landscape and vegetation also draws scientists interested in its geological past.

“The petrified forest is the first stop on our fieldtrip,” said Chronis Tzedakis, a professor of physical geography at University College London, who has been running field classes on the Aegean isle for the past decade. “It never disappoints … These new finds are stunning. The tree with its branches still attached is a rarity, while 150 trunks recovered together will provide a snapshot of a forest community which will allow us to assess its biodiversity at one point in time.”

It was in Lesbos that Aristotle worked on the zoological studies that would become the canon of biological thought for the next 2,000 years.

Tzedakis has found himself pondering whether the philosopher who was invited to the island by his disciple, Theophrastus, was ultimately influenced by the geological wonder. The polymath, himself a student of Plato, spent two years there, much of it ensconced in the study of marine biology.

“I often like to think that Aristotle, who established the foundation of scientific inquiry while on Lesbos must have seen the petrified trees of Sigri,” he said adding that the similarity of some of the fossils to their living relatives may have inspired his theory of species being fixed and well-defined.

“Having grown up in nearby Eressos, Theophrastus, the ‘father of botany’, would have surely known about it and have taken the great man to see it.”