Oldest known fossils of monocotyledons
Article Abstract:
New evidence of fossilized monocotyledonous flowers from Sweden, North America and Portugal has given improved insight into the diversification of dicotyledomous angiosperms in the Late Cretaceous period. Further information has now been obtained from fossil flowers recovered from fluvial sediments in the Turonian Raritan Formation, exposed in New Jersey. These flowers are extremely small, unisexual, radially symmetrical, trimerous and pedicellate. There is evidence that the fossils are closely connected with members of the modern monocotyledon family Triuridaceae.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 1998
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Vascular pipe dreams
Article Abstract:
Paleobotanists have re-classified a fossil plant, Cooksonia pertoni, as a vascular plant, indicating that all subsequent vascular plants may have descended from it and providing evidence for the prevailing theory of how the land plants evolved. Cooksonia is a 400-million-year fossil from the upper Silurian and lower Devonian. A new examination by D. Edwards and colleagues found that Cooksonia possessed the thickened tubes and the water-conducting system that are the morphological characteristics of vascular plants.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 1992
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Three-dimensional preservation of algae and animal embryos in a Neoproterozoic phosphorite
Article Abstract:
Phosphorites of the Doushantuo Formation in southern China have preserved fossils that record in perfect detail, the anatomy and reproductive biology of multicellular algae from the late Neoproterozoic ocean. Their structure shows that they already had many anatomical and reproductive features of modern marine flora. Preserved embryos show that the divergence of lineages resulting in bilaterians, could have occurred well before they appear in geological records.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 1998
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