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The lycophytes, when broadly circumscribed, are a group of vascular plants that include the clubmosses. They are sometimes placed in a division Lycopodiophyta or Lycophyta or in a subdivision Lycopodiophytina. They are one of the oldest lineages of extant (living) vascular plants; the group contains extinct plants that have been dated from the Silurian. Lycophytes were some of the dominating plant species of the Carboniferous period, and included the tree-like Lepidodendrales, some of which grew over 40 metres (130 ft) in height, although extant lycophytes are relatively small plants.
Paleobotany, also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (paleogeography), and the evolutionary history of plants, with a bearing upon the evolution of life in general. A synonym is paleophytology. It is a component of paleontology and paleobiology. The prefix palaeo- or paleo- means "ancient, old", and is derived from the Greek adjective παλαιός, palaios. Paleobotany includes the study of terrestrial plant fossils, as well as the study of prehistoric marine photoautotrophs, such as photosynthetic algae, seaweeds or kelp. A closely related field is palynology, which is the study of fossilized and extant spores and pollen.
Metzgeriales is an order of liverworts. The group is sometimes called the simple thalloid liverworts: "thalloid" because the members lack structures resembling stems or leaves, and "simple" because their tissues are thin and relatively undifferentiated. All species in the order have a small gametophyte stage and a smaller, relatively short-lived, spore-bearing stage. Although these plants are almost entirely restricted to regions with high humidity or readily available moisture, the group as a whole is widely distributed, and occurs on every continent except Antarctica.
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.
Baragwanathia is a genus of extinct lycopsid plants of Late Silurian to Early Devonian age, fossils of which have been found in Australia, Canada, China and Czechia. The name derives from William Baragwanath who discovered the first specimens of the type species, Baragwanathia longifolia, at Thomson River.
The Tournaisian is in the ICS geologic timescale the lowest stage or oldest age of the Mississippian, the oldest subsystem of the Carboniferous. The Tournaisian age lasted from 358.9 Ma to 346.7 Ma. It is preceded by the Famennian and is followed by the Viséan. In global stratigraphy, the Tournaisian contains two substages: the Hastarian and Ivorian. These two substages were originally designated as European regional stages.
Drepanophycales is an order of extinct lycophyte plants of Late Silurian to Late Devonian age, found in North America, China, Russia, Europe, and Australia. Sometimes known as the Asteroxylales or Baragwanathiales.
Psilophyton is a genus of extinct vascular plants. Described in 1859, it was one of the first fossil plants to be found which was of Devonian age. Specimens have been found in northern Maine, USA; Gaspé Bay, Quebec and New Brunswick, Canada; the Czech Republic; and Yunnan, China. Plants lacked leaves or true roots; spore-forming organs or sporangia were borne on the ends of branched clusters. It is significantly more complex than some other plants of comparable age and is thought to be part of the group from within which the modern ferns and seed plants evolved.
Leclercqia is a genus of early ligulate lycopsids (clubmosses), known as fossils from the Middle Devonian of Australia, North America, Germany, and Belgium. It has been placed in the Protolepidodendrales.
Trimerophytopsida is a class of early vascular plants from the Devonian, informally called trimerophytes. It contains genera such as Psilophyton. This group is probably paraphyletic, and is believed to be the ancestral group from which both the ferns and seed plants evolved. Different authors have treated the group at different taxonomic ranks using the names Trimerophyta, Trimerophytophyta, Trimerophytina, Trimerophytophytina and Trimerophytales.
Polysporangiophytes, also called polysporangiates or formally Polysporangiophyta, are plants in which the spore-bearing generation (sporophyte) has branching stems (axes) that bear sporangia. The name literally means 'many sporangia plant'. The clade includes all land plants (embryophytes) except for the bryophytes whose sporophytes are normally unbranched, even if a few exceptional cases occur. While the definition is independent of the presence of vascular tissue, all living polysporangiophytes also have vascular tissue, i.e., are vascular plants or tracheophytes. Extinct polysporangiophytes are known that have no vascular tissue and so are not tracheophytes.
Sawdonia is an extinct genus of early vascular plants, known from the Upper Silurian to the Lower Carboniferous. Sawdonia is best recognized by the large number of spikes (enations) covering the plant. These are vascular plants that do not have vascular systems in their enations. The first species of this genus was described in 1859 by Sir J. William Dawson and, was originally attributed to the genus Psilophyton. He named this plant Psilophyton princeps. In 1971 Francis Hueber proposed a new genus for this species due to its "Divergent technical characters from the generic description for Psilophyton." The holotype used for description is Dawson Collection Number 48, pro parte, Museum Specimen Number 3243. Sir J. William Dawson Collection, Peter Redpath Museum, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Pertica is a genus of extinct vascular plants of the Early to Middle Devonian. It has been placed in the "trimerophytes", a strongly paraphyletic group of early members of the lineage leading to modern ferns and seed plants.
Renalia is a genus of extinct vascular plants from the Early Devonian. It was first described in 1976 from compressed fossils in the Battery Point Formation. It is difficult to reconstruct the original form of the complete plant, but it appears to have consisted of leafless branching stems whose side branches had sporangia at their tips. It is regarded as an early relative of the lycophytes.
Henry Nathaniel Andrews, Jr. was an American paleobotanist recognized as an expert in plants of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. He was a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was elected into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1975. He was a professor at the Washington University in St. Louis from 1940 to 1964 and a paleobotanist at the Missouri Botanical Garden 1947 to 1964. From 1964 until his retirement 1975, Andrews worked at the University of Connecticut, where he served as head of the school's Botany department and later as head of the Systematics and Environmental Section.
The Battery Point Formation is a geologic formation in Quebec. It preserves fossils dating back to the early Emsian to early Eifelian the lower Devonian period.
The Campbellton Formation is a geologic formation in New Brunswick. It preserves fossils dating back to the latest Pragian and Emsian of the Devonian period.
Franhueberia is an extinct monospecific genus of vascular land plants described from Early Devonian outcrops of the Battery Point Formation along the south shore of Gaspé Bay, Quebec, Canada.
Chaleuria is a genus of extinct plants, found as fossils in New Brunswick, Canada. The rocks in which it was found are of Middle Devonian age. One species has been described, Chaleuria cirrosa. It was heterosporous, i.e. the spores were of two distinct sizes. Small spores (microspores) were in the size range 30–48 μm, large spores in the range 60–156 μm. Both kinds of spore were found in the same sporangium, although one size group tended to predominate in each sporangium. The original describers "tentatively" regarded the genus as a primitive member of the progymnosperms. In 2013, Hao and Xue listed the genus as a progymnosperm.
Calamophyton is an extinct genus of tree, or "tree-sized plant", that was extant in the Middle Devonian period. As of 2024, a well-preserved fossilized forest of Calamophyton trees discovered in Somerset, England, represents the earliest-known forest.
References
- ↑ "HUH - Databases - Botanist Search".
- 1 2 "Patricia G. Gensel". April 28, 2011.
- ↑ "Gensel, Patricia Gabbey". Who's Who of American Women, 1983-1984. Marquis Who's Who. 1983. p. 284. ISBN 978-0-8379-0413-9.
- ↑ "Labs - Patricia G. Gensel". Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
- ↑ "Botany.org (pdf)" (PDF). botany.org.
- ↑ Knaus, Margaret Jane (1995). "The Species of the Early Carboniferous Fossil Plant Genus Genselia". International Journal of Plant Sciences. 156 (1): 61–92. doi:10.1086/297230. JSTOR 2474900. S2CID 83629753.
The standard author abbreviation Gensel is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. [1]
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