'One of a kind': calls to protect Alabama's 60,000-year-old underwater forest

Efforts are under way to designate site of submerged forest off the Alabama coast a marine sanctuary

When divers jump into a particular stretch of water off the coast of Alabama, they travel back to a time before humans arrived in North America.

Submerged below the waters are the remains of a cypress tree forest that grew 60,000 years ago, but was inundated by the Gulf of Mexico and preserved from decomposition beneath sediment. Nothing like Alabama's underwater forest, in terms of age or scale, has ever been found.