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The simple carbon sugars photosynthesis produces are then used to form other organic compounds, such as the building material cellulose, the precursors for lipid and amino acid biosynthesis, or as a fuel in cellular respiration. The latter occurs not only in plants but also in animals when the carbon and energy from plants is passed through a ...
e. A biogeochemical cycle, or more generally a cycle of matter, [ 1] is the movement and transformation of chemical elements and compounds between living organisms, the atmosphere, and the Earth's crust. Major biogeochemical cycles include the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle and the water cycle. In each cycle, the chemical element or molecule ...
The abiogenic petroleum origin hypothesis proposes that most of earth's petroleum and natural gas deposits were formed inorganically, commonly known as abiotic oil. [1] Scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports a biogenic origin for most of the world's petroleum deposits. [2] [3] Mainstream theories about the formation of hydrocarbons on ...
Fossil fuel. A fossil fuel[ a] is a carbon compound - or hydrocarbon -containing material such as coal, oil, and natural gas, [ 2] formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of prehistoric organisms (animals, plants and planktons ), a process that occurs within geological formations. Reservoirs of such compound mixtures can be ...
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 ...
Grain, fruit, and vegetables are basic human foods and have been domesticated for millennia. People use plants for many purposes, such as building materials, ornaments, writing materials, and, in great variety, for medicines. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology .
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 ...
A leaf ( pl.: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, [ 1] usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", [ 2][ 3] while the leaves, stem, flower, and fruit collectively form the shoot system. [ 4]