Cairo's fossilized forest, taken while researchers from SUNY Binghamton and Cardiff University in England examined the find. Courtesy Willian Stein
The Times Union in Albany, New York has a story about the world's oldest fossilized forest. The forest was discovered in a quarry in Cairo, NY, near where other ancient trees were discovered in Gilboa, NY. These lycopsid "tree" fossils date to the Devonian Period, about 400 million years ago. They were described in a paper in the journal Current Biology in 2019. Now, there are competing ideas as to how to preserve the site for study, education, and tourism.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t have the full board’s support — we had enough to move a resolution and things like that, but with a project like this, it would be great to have full community support,” he said.
Watts, who is running for town supervisor — Coyne is not seeking reelection — wanted to sell the site at the time.
Watts said he has since changed his mind, essentially because the site can’t be sold.
To sell it, the site must be appraised, but “there’s nothing to appraise it against,” Watts said — the site is globally unique, and therefore priceless.
Watts said as recently as May’s Town Board meeting he wanted to sell it, according to HudsonValley360, and claimed at an earlier meeting he had received an estimate on the site of between $500,000 and $1 billion.
Any sale he might have pursued would have been to an educational institution, Watts told the Times Union on Monday.
“They’re the ones that can find the funding; we can’t find the funding for this,” he said. “We could do some kind of fundraiser, some chicken BBQ or something, and then we’ll only get a couple thousand dollars to put towards this.”
