Plant evolution

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Plant evolution

• Proterozoic Green algal evolution
• Mid paleozoic First land plants
• Late paleozoic Coal forests early vascular
  plants
• Latest paleozoic seed plants, early Gymnosperms
• Mesozoic Gymnosperms (and reptiles) dominant
• Late mesozoic first flowering plants
• Cenozoic coevolution of flowering plants and
  insect pollinators

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Ancestral Green Algae
Bryophytes
Ferns allies
Gymnosperms
Angiosperms
Flowers
Seeds
Overview of Plant Evolution
Vascular tissue
Embryos
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Bryophyte-like plants evolved from Charophycean
Green Algae
Chara
A Coleochaete B Parka (Ordovician) From
Berkeley Time Machine
Coleochaete
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Seedless Vascular Plants

• Vascular tissue improves sporophyte efficiency
• Dominant plants from late Devonian through early
  Permian
• Equatorial coal forests

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Early Devonian landscape
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Carboniferous (-300 my) coal forest model
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Imagine a dragonfly with a wingspan of over 1
meter
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Carboniferous forest
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Devonian plant roots
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First seed plants

• Pregymnosperms
• Early Permean
• Pangea dry, continental climates

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Seed fern seeds
Trigonocarpus from Mazon Creek formation
(Carboniferous)
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Evolution of flower fruit

• First fossils late Jurassic period of Mesozoic
  era
• Diversified during Cenozoic era
• Coevolution with pollinators

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Oldest flowering plant fossil
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Fruit fossil
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Primitive existing flowers