![Betula leopoldae SRIC SR02-22-19](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Betula_leopoldae_SRIC_SR02-22-19.jpg)
Paleobotany, which is also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of
botany
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
dealing with the recovery and identification of
plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...
remains from
geological
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other E ...
contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of
past environments (paleogeography), and the
evolutionary history of plants
The evolution of plants has resulted in a wide range of complexity, from the earliest algal mats, through multicellular marine and freshwater green algae, terrestrial bryophytes, lycopods and ferns, to the complex gymnosperms and angiosperms ( ...
, with a bearing upon the
evolution of life
Evolution is change in the heredity, heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the Gene expression, expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to ...
in general. A synonym is paleophytology. It is a component of
paleontology
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
and
paleobiology
Paleobiology (or palaeobiology) is an interdisciplinary field that combines the methods and findings found in both the earth sciences and the life sciences. Paleobiology is not to be confused with geobiology, which focuses more on the interactio ...
. The prefix ''palaeo-'' means "ancient, old",
and is derived from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
adjective , .
Paleobotany includes the study of
terrestrial plant
A terrestrial plant is a plant that grows on, in, or from land. Other types of plants are aquatic (living in water), epiphytic (living on trees) and lithophytic (living in or on rocks).
The distinction between aquatic and terrestrial plants i ...
fossils, as well as the study of
prehistoric marine photoautotroph Photoautotrophs are organisms that use light energy and inorganic carbon to produce organic materials. Eukaryotic photoautotrophs absorb energy through the chlorophyll molecules in their chloroplasts while prokaryotic photoautotrophs use chlorophyl ...
s, such as
photosynthetic algae,
seaweeds or
kelp
Kelps are large brown algae seaweeds that make up the order Laminariales. There are about 30 different genera. Despite its appearance, kelp is not a plant - it is a heterokont, a completely unrelated group of organisms.
Kelp grows in "underwa ...
. A closely related field is
palynology
Palynology is the "study of dust" (from grc-gre, παλύνω, palynō, "strew, sprinkle" and ''-logy'') or of "particles that are strewn". A classic palynologist analyses particulate samples collected from the air, from water, or from deposit ...
, which is the study of
fossilized
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
and
extant spores and
pollen.
Paleobotany is important in the reconstruction of ancient
ecological
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
systems and
climate
Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...
, known as
paleoecology
Paleoecology (also spelled palaeoecology) is the study of interactions between organisms and/or interactions between organisms and their environments across geologic timescales. As a discipline, paleoecology interacts with, depends on and informs ...
and
paleoclimatology
Paleoclimatology (American and British English spelling differences, British spelling, palaeoclimatology) is the study of climates for which direct measurements were not taken. As instrumental records only span a tiny part of Earth's history, the ...
respectively; and is fundamental to the study of green
plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...
development
Development or developing may refer to:
Arts
*Development hell, when a project is stuck in development
*Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting
*Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped
* Photograph ...
and
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
. Paleobotany has also become important to the field of
archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
, primarily for the use of
phytolith
Phytoliths (from Greek, "plant stone") are rigid, microscopic structures made of silica, found in some plant tissues and persisting after the decay of the plant. These plants take up silica from the soil, whereupon it is deposited within different ...
s in
relative dating
Relative dating is the science of determining the relative order of past events (i.e., the age of an object in comparison to another), without necessarily determining their absolute age (i.e., estimated age). In geology, rock or superficial dep ...
and in
paleoethnobotany
Paleoethnobotany (also spelled palaeoethnobotany), or archaeobotany, is the study of past human-plant interactions through the recovery and analysis of ancient plant remains. Both terms are synonymous, though paleoethnobotany (from the Greek words ...
.
The emergence of paleobotany as a scientific discipline can be seen in the early 19th century, especially in the works of the German palaeontologist
Ernst Friedrich von Schlotheim, the Czech (Bohemian) nobleman and scholar
Kaspar Maria von Sternberg
Count Kaspar Maria von Sternberg (also: ''Caspar Maria'', ''Count Sternberg'', german: Kaspar Maria Graf Sternberg, cs, hrabě Kašpar Maria Šternberk), 1761, Prague – 1838, Březina Castle), was a Bohemian theologian, mineralogist, geognost ...
, and the French botanist
Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart
Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart () FRS FRSE FGS (14 January 1801 – 18 February 1876) was a French botanist. He was the son of the geologist Alexandre Brongniart and grandson of the architect, Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart. Brongniart's pioneeri ...
.
Overview of the paleobotanical record
Macroscopic remains of true
vascular plants
Vascular plants (), also called tracheophytes () or collectively Tracheophyta (), form a large group of land plants ( accepted known species) that have lignified tissues (the xylem) for conducting water and minerals throughout the plant. They ...
are first found in the
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
record during the
Silurian Period of the
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon.
The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838
by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ' ...
era. Some dispersed, fragmentary fossils of disputed affinity, primarily
spores
In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, ...
and
cuticles
A cuticle (), or cuticula, is any of a variety of tough but flexible, non-mineral outer coverings of an organism, or parts of an organism, that provide protection. Various types of "cuticle" are non- homologous, differing in their origin, structu ...
, have been found in rocks from the
Ordovician
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya.
T ...
Period in
Oman
Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of ...
, and are thought to derive from
liverwort
The Marchantiophyta () are a division of non-vascular land plants commonly referred to as hepatics or liverworts. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of ...
- or
moss-grade fossil plants ().
![Rhynie chert](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Rhynie_chert.jpg)
An important early land plant fossil locality is the
Rhynie Chert
The Rhynie chert is a Lower Devonian sedimentary deposit exhibiting extraordinary fossil detail or completeness (a Lagerstätte). It is exposed near the village of Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland; a second unit, the Windyfield chert, is locate ...
, found outside the village of
Rhynie in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
. The Rhynie chert is an Early
Devonian sinter (
hot spring
A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by c ...
) deposit composed primarily of
silica
Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is ...
. It is exceptional due to its preservation of several different
clades of plants, from
mosses and
lycophyte
The lycophytes, when broadly circumscribed, are a vascular plant (tracheophyte) subgroup of the kingdom Plantae. They are sometimes placed in a division Lycopodiophyta or Lycophyta or in a subdivision Lycopodiophytina. They are one of the oldes ...
s to more unusual, problematic forms. Many fossil animals, including
arthropods and
arachnids, are also found in the Rhynie Chert, and it offers a unique window on the history of early terrestrial life.
Plant-derived
macrofossil
Macrofossils, also known as megafossils, are preserved organic remains large enough to be visible without a microscope. The term ''macrofossil'' stands in opposition to the term microfossil. Microfossils, by contrast, require substantial magnifica ...
s become abundant in the Late
Devonian and include
tree
In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...
trunks,
frond
A frond is a large, divided leaf. In both common usage and botanical nomenclature, the leaves of ferns are referred to as fronds and some botanists restrict the term to this group. Other botanists allow the term frond to also apply to the lar ...
s, and
root
In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...
s. The earliest tree was thought to be ''
Archaeopteris'', which bears simple,
fern
A fern (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. The polypodiophytes include all living pteridophytes exce ...
-like
leaves spirally arranged on branches atop a
conifer-like
trunk (), though it is now known to be the recently discovered ''
Wattieza''.
Widespread
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when ...
swamp deposits across North America and Europe during the
Carboniferous Period contain a wealth of fossils containing
arborescent lycopods up to 30 meters tall, abundant
seed plants
A spermatophyte (; ), also known as phanerogam (taxon Phanerogamae) or phaenogam (taxon Phaenogamae), is any plant that produces seeds, hence the alternative name seed plant. Spermatophytes are a subset of the embryophytes or land plants. They inc ...
, such as
conifers and
seed ferns, and countless smaller,
herbaceous plants.
Angiosperms (
flowering plant
Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...
s) evolved during the
Mesozoic
The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...
, and flowering plant pollen and leaves first appear during the Early
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...
, approximately 130 million years ago.
Plant fossils
A
plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
is any preserved part of a
plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...
that has long since died. Such fossils may be prehistoric impressions that are many millions of years old, or bits of
charcoal that are only a few hundred years old. Prehistoric plants are various groups of plants that lived before recorded
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
(before about
3500 BC
The 35th century BC in the Near East sees the gradual transition from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Proto-writing enters transitional stage, developing towards writing proper. Wheeled vehicles are now known beyond Mesopotamia, having s ...
).
Preservation of plant fossils
![Gingkoites huttoni 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Gingkoites_huttoni_1.jpg)
Plant fossils can be preserved in a variety of ways, each of which can give different types of information about the original parent plant. These modes of preservation are discussed in the general pages on
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s but may be summarised in a palaeobotanical context as follows.
#Adpressions (compressions – impressions). These are the most commonly found type of plant fossil. They provide good morphological detail, especially of dorsiventral (flattened) plant parts such as leaves. If the cuticle is preserved, they can also yield fine anatomical detail of the epidermis. Little other detail of cellular anatomy is normally preserved.
![Rhynia stem](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Rhynia_stem.jpg)
#Petrifactions (permineralisations or anatomically preserved fossils). These provide fine detail of the cell anatomy of the plant tissue. Morphological detail can also be determined by serial sectioning, but this is both time consuming and difficult.
#Moulds and casts. These only tend to preserve the more robust plant parts such as seeds or woody stems. They can provide information about the three-dimensional form of the plant, and in the case of casts of tree stumps can provide evidence of the density of the original vegetation. However, they rarely preserve any fine morphological detail or cell anatomy. A subset of such fossils are pith casts, where the centre of a stem is either hollow or has delicate pith. After death, sediment enters and forms a cast of the central cavity of the stem. The best known examples of pith casts are in the Carboniferous Sphenophyta (''Calamites'') and cordaites (''Artisia'').
![Crossotheca nodule](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Crossotheca_nodule.JPG)
#Authigenic mineralisations. These can provide very fine, three-dimensional morphological detail, and have proved especially important in the study of reproductive structures that can be severely distorted in adpressions. However, as they are formed in mineral nodules, such fossils can rarely be of large size.
#Fusain. Fire normally destroys plant tissue but sometimes charcoalified remains can preserve fine morphological detail that is lost in other modes of preservation; some of the best evidence of early flowers has been preserved in fusain. Fusain fossils are delicate and often small, but because of their buoyancy can often drift for long distances and can thus provide evidence of vegetation away from areas of sedimentation.
Fossil-taxa
Plant fossils almost always represent disarticulated parts of plants; even small herbaceous plants are rarely preserved whole. Those few examples of plant fossils that appear to be the remains of whole plants in fact are incomplete as the internal cellular tissue and fine micromorphological detail is normally lost during fossilisation. Plant remains can be preserved in a variety of ways, each revealing different features of the original parent plant.
Because of these difficulties, palaeobotanists usually assign different taxonomic names to different parts of the plant in different modes of preservation. For instance, in the subarborescent Palaeozoic
sphenophytes, an impression of a leaf might be assigned to the genus ''Annularia'', a compression of a cone assigned to ''Palaeostachya'', and the stem assigned to either ''Calamites'' or ''Arthroxylon'' depending on whether it is preserved as a cast or a petrifaction. All of these fossils may have originated from the same parent plant but they are each given their own taxonomic name. This approach to naming plant fossils originated with the work of
Adolphe Brongniart and has stood the test of time.
For many years this approach to naming plant fossils was accepted by palaeobotanists but not formalised within the ''International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature''. Eventually, and proposed a set of formal provisions, the essence of which was introduced into the 1952
International Code of Botanical Nomenclature
The ''International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants'' (ICN) is the set of rules and recommendations dealing with the formal botanical names that are given to plants, fungi and a few other groups of organisms, all those "trad ...
. These early provisions allowed fossils representing particular parts of plants in a particular state of preservation to be referred to organ-genera. In addition, a small subset of organ-genera, to be known as form-genera, were recognised based on the artificial taxa introduced by mainly for foliage fossils. Over the years, the concepts and regulations surrounding organ- and form-genera became modified within successive codes of nomenclature, reflecting a failure of the palaeobotanical community to agree on how this aspect of plant taxonomic nomenclature should work (a history reviewed by ). The use of organ- and fossil-genera was abandoned with the ''St Louis Code'' (), replaced by "morphotaxa".
The situation in the ''Vienna Code'' of 2005
was that any plant taxon whose type is a fossil, except
Diatoms, can be described as a morphotaxon, a particular part of a plant preserved in a particular way. Although the name is always fixed to the type specimen, the circumscription (i.e. range of specimens that may be included within the taxon) is defined by the taxonomist who uses the name. Such a change in circumscription could result in an expansion of the range of plant parts and/or preservation states that can be incorporated within the taxon. For instance, a fossil-genus originally based on compressions of ovules could be used to include the multi-ovulate cupules within which the ovules were originally borne. A complication can arise if, in this case, there was an already named fossil-genus for these cupules. If palaeobotanists were confident that the type of the ovule fossil-genus and of the cupule fossil-genus could be included in the same genus, then the two names would compete as to being the correct one for the newly emended genus.
Morphotaxa were introduced to try to overcome the issue of competing names that represented different plant parts and/or preservation states. What would you do if the species-name of a pollen-organ was pre-dated by the species name of the type of pollen produced by that pollen organ. It was argued that palaeobotanists would be unhappy if the pollen organs were named using the taxonomic name whose type specimen is a pollen grain. As pointed out by , however, the risk of the name of a pollen grain supplanting the name of a pollen organ is most unlikely. Palaeobotanists would have to be totally confident that the type specimen of the pollen species, which would normally be a dispersed grain, definitely came from the same plant that produced the pollen organ. We know from modern plants that closely related but distinct species can produce virtually indistinguishable pollen. It would seem that morphotaxa offer no real advantage to palaeobotanists over normal fossil-taxa and the concept was abandoned with the 2011 botanical congress and the 2012
International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants.
Fossil groups of plants
![LepidodendronOhio](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/LepidodendronOhio.jpg)
Some plants have remained almost unchanged throughout earth's geological time scale.
Horsetail
''Equisetum'' (; horsetail, snake grass, puzzlegrass) is the only living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of ferns, which reproduce by spores rather than seeds.
''Equisetum'' is a "living fossil", the only living genus of the entire subclass ...
s had evolved by the Late Devonian,
early
fern
A fern (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. The polypodiophytes include all living pteridophytes exce ...
s had evolved by the
Mississippian,
conifers by the
Pennsylvanian. Some plants of prehistory are the same ones around today and are thus
living fossil
A living fossil is an extant taxon that cosmetically resembles related species known only from the fossil record. To be considered a living fossil, the fossil species must be old relative to the time of origin of the extant clade. Living foss ...
s, such as ''
Ginkgo biloba
''Ginkgo biloba'', commonly known as ginkgo or gingko ( ), also known as the maidenhair tree, is a species of tree native to China. It is the last living species in the order Ginkgoales, which first appeared over 290 million years ago. Fossil ...
'' and ''
Sciadopitys verticillata''. Other plants have changed radically, or became extinct.
Examples of prehistoric plants are:
*''
Araucaria mirabilis
''Araucaria mirabilis'' is an extinct species of coniferous tree from Patagonia, Argentina. It belongs to the genus '' Araucaria''.
''A. mirabilis'' are known from large amounts of very well preserved silicified wood and cones from the Cerro ...
''
*''
Archaeopteris''
*''
Calamites
''Calamites'' is a genus of extinct arborescent (tree-like) horsetails to which the modern horsetails (genus ''Equisetum'') are closely related. Unlike their herbaceous modern cousins, these plants were medium-sized trees, growing to heights o ...
''
*''
Dillhoffia''
*''
Glossopteris
''Glossopteris'' tymology: from Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa, " tongue ") + πτερίς (pterís, " fern ")is the largest and best-known genus of the extinct Permian order of seed ferns known as Glossopteridales (also known as Arberia ...
''
*''
Hymenaea protera''
*''
Nelumbo aureavallis''
*''
Pachypteris''
*''
Palaeoraphe
''Palaeoraphe'' is an extinct genus of palms, represented by one species, ''Palaeoraphe dominicana'' from early Miocene Burdigalian stage Dominican amber deposits on the island of Hispaniola, in the modern-day Dominican Republic. Discovery a ...
''
*''
Peltandra primaeva''
*''
Protosalvinia''
*''
Trochodendron nastae''
Notable paleobotanists
*
Edward W. Berry
Edward Wilber Berry (February 10, 1875 – September 20, 1945) was an American paleontologist and botanist; the principal focus of his research was paleobotany.
Early life
Berry was born February 10, 1875, in Newark, New Jersey, and finished hig ...
(1875–1945), paleoecology and phytogeography
*
William Gilbert Chaloner
William Gilbert Chaloner FRS (22 November 1928 – 13 October 2016) was a British palaeobotanist. He was Professor of Botany in the Earth Sciences Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Visiting Professor in Earth Sciences ...
(1928–2016)
*
Isabel Cookson
Isabel Clifton Cookson (25 December 1893 – 1 July 1973) was an Australian botanist who specialised in palaeobotany and palynology.
Early years and education
Cookson was born at Hawthorn, Victoria, and attended the Methodist Ladies' College ...
(1893–1973), early vascular plants, palynology
*
Dianne Edwards (1942–), colonisation of land by early terrestrial floras
*
Thomas Maxwell Harris (1903–1983), Mesozoic plants of Jameson Land (Greenland) and Yorkshire.
*
Robert Kidston
Dr Robert Kidston, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS FRSE LLD (29 June 1852 – 13 July 1924) was a Scottish botanist and palaeobotanist.
Life
He was born in Bishopton House in Renfrewshire on 29 June 1852 the youngest of twelve children of Robe ...
(1852–1924), early land plants, Devonian and Carboniferous floras, and their use in stratigraphy
*
Ethel Ida Sanborn (1883–1952), extinct flora of Oregon and the Western United States
*
Birbal Sahni
Birbal Sahni FRS (14 November 1891 – 10 April 1949) was an Indian paleobotanist who studied the fossils of the Indian subcontinent. He also took an interest in geology and archaeology. He founded what is now the Birbal Sahni Institute of Pa ...
(1891–1949), Revision of Indian Gondwana Plants
*
Dunkinfield Henry Scott (1854–1934), analysis of the structures of fossil plants
*
Constantin von Ettingshausen
Constantin Freiherr von Ettingshausen (or Baron Constantin von Ettingshausen) (16 June 1826 in Vienna – 1 February 1897 in Graz) was an Austrian botanist known for his paleobotanical studies of flora from the Tertiary era. He was the son of ...
(1826–1897), Tertiary floras
*
Kaspar Maria von Sternberg
Count Kaspar Maria von Sternberg (also: ''Caspar Maria'', ''Count Sternberg'', german: Kaspar Maria Graf Sternberg, cs, hrabě Kašpar Maria Šternberk), 1761, Prague – 1838, Březina Castle), was a Bohemian theologian, mineralogist, geognost ...
(1761–1838), the "father of paleobotany"
*
Franz Unger (1800–1870), pioneer in plant physiology, phytotomy and soil science
*
Jack A. Wolfe (1936–2005), Tertiary paleoclimate of western North America
* Gilbert Arthur Leisman (1924–1996), known for work on Carboniferous lycophytes of central North America.
See also
*
Cryptospores
*
Evolutionary history of plants
The evolution of plants has resulted in a wide range of complexity, from the earliest algal mats, through multicellular marine and freshwater green algae, terrestrial bryophytes, lycopods and ferns, to the complex gymnosperms and angiosperms ( ...
*
Paleophycology
Paleophycology (also once known as paleoalgology) is the subdiscipline of paleobotany that deals with the study and identification of fossil algae and their evolutionary relationships and ecology.
The field is very important in the science of pa ...
*
Prehistoric life
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as ''Ga'', for ''gigaannum'') and evide ...
*
Timeline of plant evolution
This article attempts to place key plant innovations in a geological context. It concerns itself only with novel adaptations and events that had a major ecological significance, not those that are of solely anthropological interest. The timeline ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Wilson N. Stewart and Gar W. Rothwell. 2010. ''Paleobotany and the Evolution of Plants'', Second edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. .
* Thomas N. Taylor, Edith L. Taylor, and Michael Krings. 2008. ''Paleobotany: The Biology and Evolution of Fossil Plants'', 2nd edition. Academic Press (an imprint of Elsevier): Burlington, MA; New York, NY; San Diego, CA, USA, London, UK. 1252 pages. .
External links
International Organisation of PaleobotanyBotanical Society of America – Paleobotanical Section
The Biota of Early Terrestrial Ecosystems: The Rhynie Chert, University of Aberdeen, UKThe Sternberg ProjectPaleoNet – listservs and links related to paleontology Plants that lived when dinosaurs roamed the earth
The International Fossil Plant Names Index (IFPNI): Global registry of scientific names of fossil organisms
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Botany
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
Branches of botany