At https://sciencex.com/news/2020-05-fossil-discovery-reveals-earliest-rela… …. a fossil discovery reveals the earliest relative of modern mammals – going back 300 million years ago. That is a very long time ago and you will not be surprised to learn that it is a mammal like reptile, a synoside. The fossil came from Nova Scotia – from the remains of a vast fossil forest. At the time Nova Scotia was located near the equator, it is thought. Again, as at any buried forest throughout the geological record, tree stumps and trunks are preserved in an upright position – as if they had been snapped off.
See also https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.1316
At https://phys.org/news/2020-05-date-age-oldest-known-forest-west.html … here we have the oldest known forest from China, going back to the Devonian.
At https://phys.org/news/2020-05-upper-paleolithic-technology-north-china.html … we move from hundreds of millions of years ago to one of thousands of years ago, the first Upper Palaeolithic technology in China – in North China to be exact. It has been dated at around 40,000 years ago. That is an interesting date as it marks the demise of Neanderthals and Denisovans. Modern humans emerging in the aftermath …
… artefacts of modern humans were found in sedimentary layers (see the above sequence). The culture is thought to have spread into China from the west. The Altai region has been suggested. This is a region that was a hotbed for Neanderthals and Denisovans. What are they saying here?