Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The first fossil records of vascular plants, that is, land plants with vascular tissues, appeared in the Silurian period. The earliest known representatives of this group (mostly from the northern hemisphere) are placed in the genus Cooksonia. They had very simple branching patterns, with the branches terminated by flattened sporangia.
Land plants evolved from a group of freshwater green algae, perhaps as early as 850 mya, [3] but algae-like plants might have evolved as early as 1 billion years ago. [2] The closest living relatives of land plants are the charophytes, specifically Charales; if modern Charales are similar to the distant ancestors they share with land plants, this means that the land plants evolved from a ...
Insects roamed the land and would soon take to the skies; sharks swam the oceans as top predators, [83] and vegetation covered the land, with seed-bearing plants and forests soon to flourish. Four-limbed tetrapods gradually gain adaptations which will help them occupy a terrestrial life-habit. 360 Ma First crabs and ferns.
The fossil history of flowering plants records the development of flowers and other distinctive structures of the angiosperms, now the dominant group of plants on land.The history is controversial as flowering plants appear in great diversity in the Cretaceous, with scanty and debatable records before that, creating a puzzle for evolutionary biologists that Charles Darwin named an "abominable ...
Polyploidy is pervasive in plants and some estimates suggest that 30–80% of living plant species are polyploid, and many lineages show evidence of ancient polyploidy (paleopolyploidy) in their genomes. [8] [9] [10] Huge explosions in angiosperm species diversity appear to have coincided with ancient genome duplications shared by many species.
On land, plant groups diversified rapidly in an event known as the Devonian explosion when plants made lignin, leading to taller growth and vascular tissue; the first trees and seeds evolved. These new habitats led to greater arthropod diversification. The first amphibians appeared and fish occupied the top of the food chain.
President Joe Biden used his authority under the Antiquities Act to protect nearly 850,000 acres from the drilling of fossil fuels and mining, according to the departments of Interior and Agriculture.
Artist interpretation of a Devonian swamp forest scene. Artwork by Eduard Riou from The World Before the Deluge 1872. The Silurian-Devonian Terrestrial Revolution, also known as the Devonian Plant Explosion (DePE) [1] and the Devonian explosion, was a period of rapid colonization, diversification and radiation of land plants and fungi on dry lands that occurred 428 to 359 million years ago ...