The zosterophylls are a group of extinct land plants that first appeared in the Silurian period. The taxon was first established by Banks in 1968 as the subdivision Zosterophyllophytina; they have since also been treated as the division Zosterophyllophyta or Zosterophyta and the class or plesion Zosterophyllopsida or Zosteropsida. They were among the first vascular plants in the fossil record, and had a world-wide distribution. They were probably stem-group lycophytes, forming a sister group to the ancestors of the living lycophytes. By the late Silurian a diverse assemblage of species existed, examples of which have been found fossilised in what is now Bathurst Island in Arctic Canada.
Protosalvinia is a prehistoric plant found commonly in shale from shoreline habitats of the Upper Devonian period. The name Protosalvinia is a misnomer. The name literally means early Salvinia, and was given in the erroneous belief that the fossils were an earlier form of the living aquatic fern Salvinia. It is no longer believed that the fossils come from a fern, but deciding exactly what the fossils represent is still a matter of debate.
Cryptospores are microscopic fossilized spores produced by embryophytes. They first appear in the fossil record during the middle of the Ordovician period, as the oldest fossil evidence for the colonization of land by plants. A similar category is miospores, a term generally used for spores smaller than 200 μm. Both cryptospores and miospores are types of palynomorphs.
Wattieza was a genus of prehistoric trees that existed in the mid-Devonian that belong to the cladoxylopsids, close relatives of the modern ferns and horsetails. The 2005 discovery in Schoharie County, New York, of fossils from the Middle Devonian about 385 million years ago united the crown of Wattieza to a root and trunk known since 1870. The fossilized grove of "Gilboa stumps" discovered at Gilboa, New York, were described as Eospermatopteris, though the complete plant remained unknown. These fossils have been described as the earliest known trees, standing 8 m (26 ft) or more tall, resembling the unrelated modern tree fern.
Rhynia is a single-species genus of Devonian vascular plants. Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii was the sporophyte generation of a vascular, axial, free-sporing diplohaplontic embryophytic land plant of the Early Devonian that had anatomical features more advanced than those of the bryophytes. Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii was a member of a sister group to all other eutracheophytes, including modern vascular plants.
Professor Dianne Edwards CBE, FRS, FRSE, FLS, FLSW is a palaeobotanist, who studies the colonisation of land by plants, and early land plant interactions.
Metzgeriothallus sharonae is the oldest known liverwort fossil, dating to the Middle Devonian. It is a simple, thalloid organism. M. metzgerioides is known from more fragmentary material dating to the Carboniferous of Scotland.
Adoketophyton is a genus of extinct vascular plants of the Early Devonian. The plant was first described in 1977 based on fossil specimens from the Posongchong Formation, Wenshan district, Yunnan, China. These were originally named Zosterophyllum subverticillatum; later the species was transferred to a new genus as Adoketophyton subverticillatum. One cladistic analysis suggested that it is a lycophyte, related to the zosterophylls. Other researchers regard its placement within the vascular plants as uncertain.
Taeniocrada is a genus of extinct plants of Devonian age. It is used as a form genus for fossil plants with leafless flattened stems which divided dichotomously and had prominent midribs regarded as containing vascular tissues. It has been suggested that some species assigned to this genus were aquatic.
This article records new taxa of fossil plants that are scheduled to be described during the year 2015, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleobotany that are scheduled to occur in the year 2015.
This article contains papers in paleobotany that were published in 2016.
Tortotubus is an early terrestrial fungus. Its growth trajectory can be ascertained from its fossils, which occur across the globe from the Ordovician to the Devonian. These fossils document foraging activities of slender, cell-wide exploratory hyphae; when these hit a source of food, they produced secondary branches that grew back down the original filament, covered themselves with an envelope, and served as pipes to shuttle nutrients to other parts of the organism. Today, mycelium with this growth pattern is observed in the mushroom-forming fungi.
This article records new taxa of plants that are scheduled to be described during the year 2017, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleobotany that are scheduled to occur in the year 2017.
This article records new taxa of plants that are scheduled to be described during the year 2018, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleobotany that occurred in the year 2018.
The Waterloo Farm lagerstätte is a Famennian lagerstätte in South Africa that constitutes the only known record of a near-polar Devonian coastal ecosystem.
This list of 2013 in paleobotany records new fossil plant taxa that were described during 2013, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleobotany that occurred in the year.
This article records new taxa of fossil plants that are scheduled to be described during the year 2021, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleobotany that are scheduled to occur in the year 2021.
This paleobotany list records new fossil plant taxa that were to be described during the year 2022, as well as notes other significant paleobotany discoveries and events which occurred during 2022.
This paleobotany list records new fossil plant taxa that were to be described during the year 2012, as well as notes other significant paleobotany discoveries and events which occurred during 2012.
This paleobotany list records new fossil plant taxa that were to be described during the year 2023, as well as notes other significant paleobotany discoveries and events which occurred during 2023.
