Kiski River Fossil

So while cleaning out my inbox today I came across this story that my father in Pittsburgh, PA had sent me, sorry I don't just embed the video I couldn't figure out how to from the WTAE page. The gist of the story is that a kayaker was going along the Kiski River in Armstrong County, not far from Pittsburgh, and saw something that looked like something he had seen before and it turned out to be the remains of an ancient tree which ended up being a Lepidodendron tree.

The 45-year-old, who said he grew up watching "Land of the Lost," told Channel 4 Action News' Jennifer Miele that he knew he had found something special.

"It's not too often you find something 300 million years old in your own backyard," Blackham [the discoverer] told Miele.

If you watch the video they end by implying that the climate in Pittsburgh used to be a lot warmer and more humid than it is today when this fossil was alive. This is because of the shifting of the continental plates over time. 300 million years ago Pittsburgh was located closer to the equator and the climate was much more like that of present day Louisiana, hot and humid. This period is known in North America as the Pennsylvanian, in Europe it is combined with the Mississippian and together are known as the Carboniferous. You can probably guess where the name comes from but just in case. The period is named after the state of Pennsylvania, during this period large swamps that covered most of PA. The organic matter that settled in the boggy conditions of the swamp were slowly compressed over time and form the vast coal fields that helped make Pittsburgh the Steel City.