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A living fossil is a deprecated term for an extant taxon that phenotypically 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 fossils commonly are of species-poor lineages, but they need not be.
Plant fossils almost always represent disarticulated parts of plants; even small herbaceous plants are rarely preserved whole. The few examples of plant fossils that appear to be the remains of whole plants are in fact incomplete as the internal cellular tissue and fine micromorphological detail is normally lost during fossilization.
The ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) is a living fossil, with fossils similar to the modern plant dating back to the Permian, 270 million years ago.The closest living relatives of the clade are the cycads, [4] which share with the extant G. biloba the characteristic of motile sperm.
Equisetum (/ ˌ ɛ k w ɪ ˈ s iː t əm /; horsetail) is the only living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds. [2]Equisetum is a "living fossil", the only living genus of the entire subclass Equisetidae, which for over 100 million years was much more diverse and dominated the understorey of late Paleozoic forests.
Gnetophyta (/ n ɛ ˈ t ɒ f ɪ t ə, ˈ n ɛ t oʊ f aɪ t ə /) is a division of plants (alternatively considered the subclass Gnetidae or order Gnetales), grouped within the gymnosperms (which also includes conifers, cycads, and ginkgos), that consists of some 70 species across the three relict genera: Gnetum (family Gnetaceae), Welwitschia (family Welwitschiaceae), and Ephedra (family ...
The structures are considered to be one of the oldest ecosystems on Earth, according to NASA, representing the earliest fossil evidence for life on our planet from at least 3½ billion years ago.
They are one of the oldest lineages of extant (living) vascular plants; the group contains extinct plants that have been dated from the Silurian (ca. 425 million years ago). [ 2 ] [ 3 ] 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 ...
Welwitschia is the only living genus of the family Welwitschiaceae and order Welwitschiales in the division Gnetophyta, and is one of three living genera in Gnetophyta, alongside Gnetum and Ephedra. Informal sources commonly refer to the plant as a " living fossil ".