LARAMIE, Wyo., Aug. 13 -- The University of Wyoming issued the following news release:

For more than a decade, University of Wyoming botany Professor Ellen Currano has been collecting fossilized remnants of trees and plants that thrived about 56 million years ago in what is now Wyoming.

The work of Currano and a dozen UW undergraduate and graduate students in the Big Horn and Hanna basins has helped paint a picture of a much different landscape than exists today, showing that the forests of ancient Wyoming teemed with giant dawn redwood trees overlooking sycamores, alders, palms and other subtropical and tropical plant species.

Now, Currano's findings are part of a new scientific paper -- published today in the journal Science -- that re...