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The tree-like Archaeopteris, ancestral to the gymnosperms, and the giant cladoxylopsid trees had true wood. These are the oldest known trees of the world's first forests. Prototaxites was the fruiting body of an enormous fungus that stood more than 8 meters tall. By the end of the Devonian, the first seed-forming plants had appeared.
Land plants evolved from a group of freshwater green algae, perhaps as early as 850 mya, [3] but algae-like plants might have evolved as early as 1 billion years ago. [2] The closest living relatives of land plants are the charophytes, specifically Charales; if modern Charales are similar to the distant ancestors they share with land plants, this means that the land plants evolved from a ...
End Ordovician: 440 million years ago, 86% of all species lost, including graptolites. Late Devonian: 375 million years ago, 75% of species lost, including most trilobites. End Permian, The Great Dying: 251 million years ago, 96% of species lost, including tabulate corals, and most trees and synapsids.
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
The first eon in Earth's history, the Hadean, begins with the Earth's formation and is followed by the Archean eon at 3.8 Ga. [2]: 145 The oldest rocks found on Earth date to about 4.0 Ga, and the oldest detrital zircon crystals in rocks to about 4.4 Ga, [34] [35] [36] soon after the formation of the Earth's crust and the Earth itself.
In Eifelian age, cladoxylopsid trees formed the first forests in Earth history. [64] By the end of the Devonian, the first seed-forming plants had appeared. This rapid appearance of many plant groups and growth forms has been referred to as the Devonian Explosion or the Silurian-Devonian Terrestrial Revolution. [65]
The earliest known life forms on Earth may be as old as 4.1 billion years (or Ga) according to biologically fractionated graphite inside a single zircon grain in the Jack Hills range of Australia. [2] The earliest evidence of life found in a stratigraphic unit, not just a single mineral grain, is the 3.7 Ga metasedimentary rocks containing ...
The first known forests on Earth arose in the Middle Devonian (approximately 390 million years ago), with the evolution of cladoxylopsid plants like Calamophyton. [31] Appeared in the Late Devonian, Archaeopteris was both tree-like and fern-like plant, growing to 20 metres (66 ft) in height or more. [32]