For a long time, many people have pictured Europe before human settlement as a continuous blanket of dense forest. A new study suggests that picture is largely wrong. Over a span of more than 20 million years, the continent was dominated by open woodlands, interspersed with bright meadows and populated by large grazing animals.
The findings challenge the long-held assumption that dense forest represented Europe's natural state. Instead, the landscape appears to have been a mosaic in which trees stood apart from one another, leaving generous space for grasses and flowering plants to thrive. Large herbivores would have moved through these open spaces, shaping the vegetation as they fed.
The researchers also draw a practical lesson for conservation. If open habitats were the norm for such a long period, then efforts to restore Europe's ecosystems by planting trees densely may work against biodiversity. Species adapted to meadows and open woodland could lose the conditions they depend on when those areas are filled in with closely spaced trees.
The main conclusions rest on the primary report. Further work will be needed to test how widely these patterns applied across the continent and across different periods within that long timeframe.