Survivors from pre-history still living in East Finchley

By Mike Coles, from research by Gill Steiner and Tony Roberts

East Finchley as a recognisable community has only existed for about 300 years. In prehistory around 110,000 years ago the London area was occupied by elephants and hippopotami and other exotic animals. Homo Sapiens only arrived around 28,000 years ago.

But what we can say is that there are things living in East Finchley today that have been around for a lot longer than us humans. Some local inhabitants may even have been on the land where we now live for up to 400 million years. Here are four:

Horsetail

Horsetail, or Equisetum is a plant often called a living fossil but also a weed. There is an ongoing debate about how long it has been around, but 100 million years is a popular figure. In prehistoric times it was a larger and more diverse plant growing up to 90 feet tall and is abundant in coal deposits from the Carboniferous period. It is spread by spores which may be able to hibernate and come back to life when conditions are right. The horsetails in the photo are on the Parkland Walk going up to Muswell Hill.

Ferns

Also spread by spores, ferns are everywhere locally and first appear in the fossil record about 360 million years ago, but the group that makes up 80% of living ferns did not appear and diversify until around 145 million years ago, along with the rise of flowering plants that came to dominate the world’s flora. Look in any local woodland with plenty of ground cover and it won’t take you long to find a fern.

Moss

Moss again is everywhere and yet again spread by spores, but the fossil record of moss is not so good, due to their soft-walled and fragile nature. Recent research shows that ancient moss could explain why some ice ages occurred. When the ancestors of today’s moss started to spread on land around 470 million years ago a domino effect happened. They absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and caused chemical changes on the rocks they were growing on, further causing algae blooms in lakes and seas which in turn led to a mass extinction of marine species. And as the levels of carbon dioxide dropped the world cooled, allowing the formation of ice caps on the poles and further extinctions.

Silverfish 

Silverfish are common shiny silver insects with scales and antennae around three quarters of an inch long. They don’t have wings, but they have a soft body and are covered in fine scales that look like a fish. They normally live in moist domestic nooks and crannies all over East Finchley, their favoured diet being books and wallpaper which, although harmless in other respects, makes them a bit of a pest.

Silverfish are considered the earliest and most primitive kind of insects. They evolved more than 400 million years ago and have survived at least four extinctions. Silverfish like the dark. They hide during the day and avoid direct sunlight. If you move an object they are hiding in or under, they will dart out and find another dark hiding place. It’s tempting to squish them but perhaps these doughty survivors from a prehistoric age deserve a bit more respect.

For a comprehensive review of East Finchley’s history over the last few hundred years read the excellent account by Tony Roberts www.iloven2.co.uk/history