At the end of the Ordovician, strange new life forms had managed to bring themselves out of the ocean and on to solid land for the first time in history. Despite a lack of leaves and roots, these plants were able to colonize prehistoric landforms and completely cover the landscape. Cooksonia was one of the first land plants to refine this evolutionary innovation. This artifact is a fragment of a compressed siltstone matrix containing fossil remains of Cooksonia. It was recovered from the Kielce Fold Zone in the southern Swietokrzyskie (Holy Cross) mountains of Poland. Dating to the juncture of the Ordovician and Silurian periods, this region was at the edge of a shallow sea. It was here, some 445 billion years ago, that life began the irreversible climb onto land that would change the planet.
