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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 ...
Molecular evidence suggests that the ancestors of angiosperms diverged from the gymnosperms during the late Devonian, about 365 million years ago. [51] The origin time of the crown group of flowering plants remains contentious. [52] By the Late Cretaceous, angiosperms appear to have dominated environments formerly occupied by ferns and gymnosperms.
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. This rapid appearance of so many plant groups and growth forms has been called the "Devonian Explosion".
The fungi were of the phylum Glomeromycota, [39] a group that probably first appeared 1 billion years ago and still forms arbuscular mycorrhizal associations today with all major land plant groups from bryophytes to pteridophytes, gymnosperms and angiosperms and with more than 80% of vascular plants.
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 ...
[8] [9] [10] Huge explosions in angiosperm species diversity appear to have coincided with ancient genome duplications shared by many species. [11] 15% of angiosperm and 31% of fern speciation events are accompanied by ploidy increase. [12]
Encephalartos sclavoi cone, about 30 cm long. Over 1,000 living species of gymnosperm exist. [2] It was previously widely accepted that the gymnosperms originated in the Late Carboniferous period, replacing the lycopsid rainforests of the tropical region, but more recent phylogenetic evidence indicates that they diverged from the ancestors of angiosperms during the Early Carboniferous.
For one, both male and female cycads are gymnosperms and bear cones (strobili), while palms are angiosperms and so flower and bear fruit. The mature foliage looks very similar between both groups, but the young emerging leaves of a cycad resemble a fiddlehead fern before they unfold and take their place in the rosette, while the leaves of palms ...