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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 ...
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.
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 ...
The streptophyte algae (i.e. excluding the land plants) have around 122 genera; they adapted to fresh water very early in their evolutionary history and have not spread back into marine environments. [28] [29] [30] Some time during the Ordovician, streptophytes invaded the land and began the evolution of the embryophyte land plants. [31]
"Our research suggests they likely originated in the low- ... Dinosaurs long dominated Earth's land ecosystems with a multitude of forms including plant-eating giants like Argentinosaurus, meat ...
Plant evolution is the subset of evolutionary phenomena that concern plants. Evolutionary phenomena are characteristics of populations that are described by averages , medians , distributions , and other statistical methods.
A C3 plant uses the Calvin cycle for the initial steps that incorporate CO 2 into organic material. A C4 plant prefaces the Calvin cycle with reactions that incorporate CO 2 into four-carbon compounds. A CAM plant uses crassulacean acid metabolism, an adaptation for photosynthesis in arid conditions. C4 and CAM plants have special adaptations ...