Original photo by Raisa Nastukova/ iStock
We tend not to think of America as a very “old” country, at least in comparison to many others. The United States as a society is still fairly new, but of course, its natural surroundings are comparable in age to those of any other place on the planet — and in some cases, they’re even older.
Case in point: The oldest known forest in the world is in Cairo, New York, roughly 125 miles north of New York City. At 385 million years old, the Cairo fossil forest was discovered near an abandoned quarry in 2009. The actual trees are no more (hence its name), and it’s believed that a massive flood led to their demise — the site even contains fish fossils. “You are walking through the roots of ancient trees,” paleobotanist Chris Berry told Science when discussing the discovery. “Standing on the quarry surface we can reconstruct the living forest around us in our imagination.”
Oops, incorrect!
It's a fibAt some 2.3 million square miles, the Amazon rainforest is the largest forest in the world. More than half of it is in Brazil, but it also extends across Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.
The fossilized roots there are thought to belong to Archaeopteris, an extinct genus of tree characterized by woody roots and branches with fernlike, fan-shaped leaves. Prior to the site’s discovery, the oldest Archaeopteris fossils were a mere 365 million years old. Forests such as this one were hugely consequential, as they pulled CO₂ from the atmosphere, raised oxygen levels, and led to the evolution of huge insects that resided within them.
Numbers Don't Lie
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The world’s most forested country is ______.
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The world’s most forested country is Russia.
More than half of the world’s forests are in five countries.
With 815 million hectares of forested land, Russia accounts for a full 20% of all the forests in the world. Four other countries account for another 34%, meaning the five of them contain 54% of all forests across the globe. Those other countries are Brazil (497 million hectares), Canada (347 million), the United States (310 million), and China (220 million). It’s probably not a coincidence that those are also the world’s five biggest countries by area (though not in the same order). On the other end of the spectrum are countries such as Monaco, Oman, Egypt, and Mauritania, which have no forest coverage at all.
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
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