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Plant evolution is the subset of evolutionary phenomena that concern plants. Evolutionary phenomena are characteristics of populations that are described by averages, medians, distributions, and other statistical methods. This distinguishes plant evolution from plant development, a branch of developmental biology which concerns the changes that ...
The evidence of plant evolution changes dramatically in the Ordovician with the first extensive appearance of embryophyte spores in the fossil record. The earliest terrestrial plants lived during the Middle Ordovician around 470 million years ago , based on their fossils found in the form of monads and spores, with resistant polymers in their ...
The idea of a tree of life arose from ancient notions of a ladder-like progression from lower into higher forms of life (such as in the Great Chain of Being).Early representations of "branching" phylogenetic trees include a "paleontological chart" showing the geological relationships among plants and animals in the book Elementary Geology, by Edward Hitchcock (first edition: 1840).
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 ...
Edward Hitchcock's fold-out paleontological chart in his 1840 Elementary Geology. Although tree-like diagrams have long been used to organise knowledge, and although branching diagrams known as claves ("keys") were omnipresent in eighteenth-century natural history, it appears that the earliest tree diagram of natural order was the 1801 "Arbre botanique" (Botanical Tree) of the French ...
No living land plant has equally dominant sporophytes and gametophytes, although some theories of the evolution of alternation of generations suggest that ancestral land plants did. Unequal (heteromorphy or anisomorphy). Gametophyte of Mnium hornum, a moss . Dominant gametophyte (gametophytic).
Inversion (evolutionary biology) – Hypothesis in developmental biology; Mosaic evolution – Evolution of characters at various rates both within and between species; Parallel evolution – Similar evolution in distinct species; Quantum evolution – Evolution where transitional forms are particularly unstable and do not last long
The evolution of photosynthesis refers to the origin and subsequent evolution of photosynthesis, the process by which light energy is used to assemble sugars from carbon dioxide and a hydrogen and electron source such as water. It is believed that the pigments used for photosynthesis initially were used for protection from the harmful effects ...