Something Really Old!
Found in the small garden outside the entrance to the East London Museum in the eastern Cape, South Africa.
These sections of fossilized trees are from the Permian Period, 299-241 million years before the present. It’s amazing to think that all that time ago, these trees were alive and now they are fossilized wood!
They were found on the farm Winkelhurst in the Stutterheim District by landowner Bobbly Wilson and brought to the East London Museum in 1955.
Prof. Marion Bamford of Wits University has identified sections of this specimen as an 
Agathoxylon species. Associated with the Glossopteris plant life of the Permian Period, these trees grew in fairly moist environments and contributed to the formation of the coal deposits in South Africa. They were deciduous trees called gymnosperms, a group of seed-bearing plants that includes the conifers (like pines), yellowwoods and cycads.
Rod has always been keen on fossils, so this was an interesting find.
Leave a Reply