About 250 million years ago, the ancient lineage of Sequoia trees like these beauties here were the most populous trees on the planet, comprising majority of the forest that existed at this time.
These are all members of the Cupressaceae family which include present day trees like Western Redcedar, Cyprus, Sugi, among others, and this is before the evolution of the Pineceae family, so long before trees like Spruce, Fir or Pines even existed. The species of Sequoia that we still have present with us today didn’t start to evolve until around 130 million years ago during the cretaceous, but these are all trees that are similar to what would’ve existed during the era of the dinosaurs, and when you take a look at the type of ecosystems they create, you can see how those ecosystems would’ve functioned with a lot more megafauna than we have today.
These trees are beasts, and they just absolutely dominate the forest canopy, leaving very little room for species to really take hold in the understory, which ends up creating this really widely spaced forest, that would’ve provided ample room for big Tyrannosaurus and Brachiosaurus and Triceratops to lumber about comfortably within these forest versus the smaller more dense stands that we see in other mature forest these days.
Pretty wild to just look at these for us and think back to the types of life that would’ve been utilizing these places as home millions of years ago, and it kinda makes you appreciate the present moment just a little bit more, as well as the adaptability and resilience of life as it evolves over time. . How frigging rad is that?!
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