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The fossil history of flowering plants records the development of flowers and other distinctive structures of the angiosperms, now the dominant group of plants on land.The history is controversial as flowering plants appear in great diversity in the Cretaceous, with scanty and debatable records before that, creating a puzzle for evolutionary biologists that Charles Darwin named an "abominable ...
Flowering plants, also known as angiosperms, spread during this period, although they did not become predominant until near the end of the period (Campanian age). [18] Their evolution was aided by the appearance of bees; in fact angiosperms and insects are a good example of coevolution.
The term angiosperm fundamentally changed in meaning in 1827 with Robert Brown, when angiosperm came to mean a seed plant with enclosed ovules. [ 35 ] [ 36 ] In 1851, with Wilhelm Hofmeister 's work on embryo-sacs, Angiosperm came to have its modern meaning of all the flowering plants including Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons.
The angiosperms and their ancestors played a very small role until they diversified during the Cretaceous. They started out as small, damp-loving organisms in the understorey, and have been diversifying ever since the Cretaceous, [101] to become the dominant member of non-boreal forests today.
The Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution (abbreviated KTR), also known as the Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution (ATR) by authors who consider it to have lasted into the Palaeogene, [1] describes the intense floral diversification of flowering plants (angiosperms) and the coevolution of pollinating insects, as well as the subsequent faunal radiation of frugivorous, nectarivorous and insectivorous ...
Just two species of fern appear to have dominated the landscape for centuries after the event. [172] In the sediments below the K–Pg boundary the dominant plant remains are angiosperm pollen grains, but the boundary layer contains little pollen and is dominated by fern spores. [173] More usual pollen levels gradually resume above the boundary ...
The dominant land plant species of the time were gymnosperms, which are vascular, cone-bearing, non-flowering plants such as conifers that produce seeds without a coating. This contrasts with the earth's current flora, in which the dominant land plants in terms of number of species are angiosperms .
Most algae have dominant gametophyte generations, but in some species the gametophytes and sporophytes are morphologically similar . An independent sporophyte is the dominant form in all clubmosses , horsetails , ferns , gymnosperms, and angiosperms that have survived to the present day.