Trees didn't exist for the first 90 percent of Earth's history.
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and plants, most likely mosses and liverworts with shallow roots, may have colonized land as recently as 470 million years ago. Vascular plants appeared around 420 million years ago, but no plants grew higher than 3 feet (1 metre) off the ground for tens of millions of years after that.
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