Researchers unearth over 250 million-year-old plant in Socorro County

A team of Smithsonian and New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science researchers discovered a new plant in Socorro County that was around 65 million years before dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

The fossils of the new plant species, Socorropeteria cancellarei, were spotted near the Quebradas Backcountry Byway, about seven miles northeast of Socorro, according to the science museum.

The discovery was made in 2023 but recently released in a journal, New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science spokesperson Stephen Hamway said in a news release on Monday.

“Based on this location, the plant’s structure and the lack of competing species, researchers believe this plant was an opportunistic colonizer of habitats that had been disturbed by floods, fires and other natural disruptions,” he said.

The Socorropteris cancellarei is about 5 millimeters in diameter and 8 inches tall, museum curator Spencer Lucas said in a phone interview. The plant was an upright, centrally rooted plant with numerous leaves clustered at the apex. It was likely a seed plant, Hamway said.

The Socorropteris cancellarei, which lived during the Permian period over 290 million years ago, “provides vital insight into what the landscape that’s now southern New Mexico may have looked like at that time,” Hamway said.

It is unclear when they arrived or how long they were around, Lucas said.

“Who knows. 100, 1,000 years,” he said. “We don’t have enough of a record at this point.”

Smithsonian curator William DiMichele, Lucas and science museum research associates, Susan Harris and Paul May, published their findings in the July 22 issue of Annals of Botany.

“This new work underscores that New Mexico was a hotbed of life during much of the Paleozoic Era, and raises new questions about the plants that lived in our state 290 million years ago,” museum executive director Anthony Fiorillo said in a news release.

Lucas said there is a lot more to be discovered in the state.

“We don’t know as much about it as we want to,” Lucas said.