It took John two months to pull the tree out of the ground, and it took Paul a further three months to piece it back together. And this is the prehistoric piece of Wiltshire it has revealed. Well, here's a far looking across east towards London, as far as the eye can see is a lagoon, a broad expanse of water. And fringing that lagoon going north and south would have been this forest. This is how Paul believes the world of John's tree looked. It's about 15, 20 metres in height, and it's got this broad, expanding crown of branches. But Paul's also been able to unravel the extraordinary events that caused the tree to be fossilised in the first place. And how did our tree die? The tree died by the waters from the lagoon flooding the forest, probably due to a landslip caused by a small earthquake. The trees were literally killed by poisoning, pickling. They probably remained upright for maybe ten, 20 or 30 years, rotting slowly and then fallen over into the waters of the lagoon and be fossilised in that way.


约翰用两个月把树挖出来，保罗又用了三个月把碎片拼接起来。这就是它所展示的史前威尔特郡，从这里往东向伦敦望去，目光所及之处，是一片咸水湖，一片开阔的水域。而咸水湖的南北沿岸，就蔓延着这片森林。保罗推想 古树当时的外貌是这样的，它大约15到20米高，它的树冠非常宽大茂盛。但保罗还解释了这棵树当初是如何奇迹般地成为化石的？这棵树是怎么死的？它所在的森林，被咸水湖的洪水淹没了。小地震导致地崩引起洪水。这棵树死于中毒和咸水的浸渍，它大概又直立了10，20或30年，慢慢腐烂，然后跌入咸水湖中，形成化石。