Scale tree (Lepidodendron)
Lepidodendron
Scale trees supplied much of the plant material from which Carboniferous coal formed, the fuel of the Industrial Revolution.
Image: Falconaumanni · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Lepidodendron
- Period
- Carboniferous
- Lived
- 359–299 Ma (359 million years ago)
- Diet
- Photosynthetic
- Habitat
- Swamp, Forest
- Length (estimate)
- 40 m
Description
Lepidodendron was a tree-like lycopsid that could grow up to about 50 metres tall, with a trunk more than a metre thick. Its bark was covered in diamond-shaped leaf cushions, so fossil trunks look like reptile skin. After they died, these trees and other swamp plants formed thick layers of peat that later turned into coal.
Habitat
Tropical swamp forests of the Carboniferous, the so-called coal forests.
Fossil sites
Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Nova Scotia
Joggins Formation
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Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Lepidodendron