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During the belated Cretaceous period , northeasterly Utah was household to pterosaurs , duck’s egg - billed dinosaurs and fearsome therizinosaurs with claws that would put Edward Scissorhands to disgrace .
Now , add together to that lean giant unfolding trees .
This artist’s reconstruction shows the newly discovered ecosystem, with both conifers and flowering trees, as well as dinosaurs, crocodylians, turtles, pterosaurs and sharks.
A dodo log found in the Mancos Shale of Utah reveals thathuge angiospermswere part of the woods canopy in North America at least 15 million years earlier than previously believed . The preserved logarithm was nearly 6 feet ( 1.8 beat ) in diameter , 36 foot ( 11 m ) long and probably came from a tree about 164 foot ( 50 m ) magniloquent , harmonise to a newfangled discipline bring out online Sept. 26 in the unfastened - access journalScience Advances . It would have partake the woods with gymnosperm like coniferous tree and ginkgo tree diagram . [ Photos : Ancient Flowering Plant May Have populate with dinosaur ]
The fogy is the first document angiosperm expectant than 9.8 animal foot ( 3 m ) in diam from prior to 75 million year ago , study researcher Michael D’Emic , a life scientist at Adelphi University in New York , assure Live Science in an e-mail .
Lucky log
The petrified log go steady to between 94 million and 90 million long time ago , part ofthe late Cretaceous period . At the time , a Brobdingnagian interior seaway trend North America in two . The log was found in what was once an ancient river delta by this seaway .
" It was carry far from the original woods , " D’Emic said .
The research worker could n’t assign the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree to any one species , but they found that it belonged to the genusParaphyllanthoxylon , a mathematical group that contains at least 11 species of fossilized tree diagram .
Fragment of a fossilized leaf from the Ferron Sandstone in Utah.
Rare find
The finding is important , D’Emic say , because it ’s unusual to feel fogey wood from the Cretaceous . That lead to the question of whether the wood simply was n’t being preserved in the fossil record or whether flower trees only were n’t around in that period of time .
The new final result suggest they were around and growing as part of the wood canopy , D’Emic said .
" This has importance for how we understand both climate and plant - animal interaction during the Cretaceous period , " he said .
The research worker also found fossilized section of turtles , a shark tooth and teeth from Cretaceous - era congenator of crocodiles .
Original clause onLive Science .
