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Fossil plants

 

 

Books about fossil plants
Plants and the K-T Boundary
In Plants and the K-T Boundary, two of the world's leading experts in palynology and paleobotany provide a comprehensive account of the fate of land plants during the 'great extinction' about 65 million years ago. They describe how the time boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene Periods (the K-T boundary) is recognized in the geological record, and how fossil plants can be used to understand global events of that time. There are case studies from over 100 localities around the world, including North America, China, Russia and New Zealand. The book concludes with an evaluation of possible causes of the K-T boundary event and its effects on floras of the past and present. This book is written for researchers and students in paleontology, botany, geology and Earth history, and everyone who has been following the course of the extinction debate and the K-T boundary paradigm shift.
Petrified Wood: The World of Fossilized Wood, Cones, Ferns, and Cycads
176 pages with 430 full color photographs of some of the most beautiful fossil specimens in existence. Chapters include Paleobotany, Geology, Mineralogy, and Collecting Petrified Materials. Hundreds of specimens from private collections are for the first time available for public view.
Ancient Forests: A Closer Look at Fossil Wood
Perhaps the most intriguing, beautiful, and informative fossil wood book of all time, exploring the subject with images to illustrate each point — with Scanning Electron Microscope images, digital micro images, macro photographs, and medium format photographs.
The Dawn Angiosperms: Uncovering the Origin of Flowering Plants
This book is about fossil plants of so-called "pre-historic" angiosperms. It reflects the newest progress in research on the origin of angiosperms, and will definitely trigger many new ideas in research. It emphasizes the early Cretaceous and Jurassic materials, rather than later ones, as they are the key periods for the origin of angiosperms. The author integrates multiple techniques, including SEM, TEM, light microscopy, peeling and cladistics, to study the morphology, anatomy and phylogeny of the fossils. Several Jurassic materials of angiosperms that have never been reported before are included, these used to be thought as pre-historic for flowering plants. Two more fossils angiosperms from the Yixian Formation, where Archaefructus was excavated, are reported. Newer and stricter criterion for identifying fossil angiosperms is proposed.
Palaeozoic Palaeobotany of Great Britain
This volume of the GCR series, one of two dealing with palaeobotany, covers the first 200 million years of the history of land plant evolution, as represented by the palaeobotany GCR site network of Great Britain. It demonstrates how the main facets of land plant evolution can be demonstrated at sites in Britain, and how the fossil record can be of value as an evolutionary and environmental indicator of the geological past.
Early Flowers and Angiosperm Evolution
The recent discovery of diverse fossil flowers and floral organs in Cretaceous strata has revealed astonishing details about the structural and systematic diversity of early angiosperms. Exploring the rich fossil record that has accumulated over the last three decades, this is a unique study of the evolutionary history of flowering plants from their earliest phases in obscurity to their dominance in modern vegetation. The discussion provides comprehensive biological and geological background information, before moving on to summarise the fossil record in detail. Including previously unpublished results based on research into Early and Late Cretaceous fossil floras from Europe and North America, the authors draw on direct palaeontological evidence of the pattern of angiosperm evolution through time. Synthesising palaeobotanical data with information from living plants, this unique book explores the latest research in the field, highlighting connections with phylogenetic systematics, structure and the biology of extant angiosperms.

Paleobotany: The Biology and Evolution of Fossil Plants, Second Edition
This book provides up-to-date coverage of fossil plants from Precambrian life to flowering plants, including fungi and algae. It begins with a discussion of geologic time, how organisms are preserved in the rock record, and how organisms are studied and interpreted and takes the student through all the relevant uses and interpretations of fossil plant. With new chapters on additional flowering plant families, paleoecology and the structure of ancient plant communities, fossil plants as proxy records for paleoclimate, new methodologies used in phylogenetic reconstruction and the addition of new fossil plant discoveries since 1993, this book provides the most comprehensive account of the geologic history and evolution of microbes, algae, fungi, and plants through time .
Plants in Mesozoic Time: Morphological Innovations, Phylogeny, Ecosystems
Plants in Mesozoic Time showcases the latest research of broad botanical and paleontological interest from the world's experts on Mesozoic plant life. Each chapter covers a special aspect of a particular plant group—ranging from horsetails to ginkgophytes, from cycads to conifers—and relates it to key innovations in structure, phylogenetic relationships, the Mesozoic flora, or to animals such as plant-eating dinosaurs. The book's geographic scope ranges from Antarctica and Argentina to the western interior of North America, with studies on the reconstruction of the Late Jurassic vegetation of the Morrison Formation and on fossil angiosperm lianas from Late Cretaceous deposits in Utah and New Mexico. The volume also includes cutting-edge studies on the evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") of Mesozoic forests, the phylogenetic analysis of the still enigmatic bennettitaleans, and the genetic developmental controls of the oldest flowers in the fossil record.
Phylogeny & Evolution of Angiosperms
Our understanding of angiosperm relationships has changed dramatically during the past ten years. The big picture of angiosperm phylogeny emerged suddenly as a direct result of collaborative molecular analyses, and longstanding views of deep-level relationships required revision. Many major clades of angiosperms did not correspond to the classes, subclasses, and orders of modern classifications. Furthermore, a wealth of recent data coupled with current understanding of phylogeny permits reevaluation of many deep-rooted evolutionary hypotheses. Soltis et al. provide a comprehensive summary of current concepts of angiosperm phylogeny and illustrate the profound impact that this phylogenetic framework has had on concepts of character evolution. In so doing, they acknowledge inadequacies in both current understanding of phylogeny and knowledge of morphological characters, as well as the need for additional study.
Flowering Plant Origin, Evolution And Phylogeny
This book covers the hot topics of angiosperm structure and evolution in several chapters discussing vegetative and reproductive characters. It also looks at the implications of ancestral angiosperm characters for an herbaceous origin and the phylogeny of angiosperms from a structure and molecular perspective.
History of Palaeobotany: Selected Essays
Often regarded as the "Cinderella" of palaeontological studies, palaeobotany has a history that contains some fascinating insights into scientific endeavour, especially by palaeontologists who were perusing a personal interest rather than a career. The problems of maintaining research facilities in universities, especially in the modern era, are described and reveal a noticeable absence of a national UK strategy to preserve centres of excellence in an avowedly specialist area. Accounts of some of the pioneers demonstrate the importance of collaboration between taxonomists and illustrators. The importance of palaeobotany in the rise of geoconservation is outlined, as well as the significant and influential role of women in the discipline. Although this volume has a predominantly UK focus, two very interesting studies outline the history of palaeobotanical work in Argentina and China.
Paleobotany and the Evolution of Plants
Originally published in 1993, this second edition of a successful textbook describes and explains in a refreshingly clear way the origin and evolution of plants as revealed by the fossil record and summarises paleobotanical information relevant to our understanding of the relationships between the major plant groups, extant and extinct. As in the first edition, the text is profusely illustrated with line illustrations and half-tones. For those students with little knowledge of plant structure and morphology there is a brief resumé of those features of extant plants that will be needed to gain a better understanding of the fossil record. Summarising charts are also used to help students visualise the interpretative material.
The Evolution of Plants
A major new undergraduate textbook on plant evoution This is a broad but provocative examination of the evolution of plants from the earliest forms of life to the development of our present flora. Taking a fresh, modern approach to a subject often treated very stuffily, the book incorporates many recent studies on the morphological evolution of plants, enlivens the subject with current research on ancient D.N.A. and other biomolecular markers, and places plant evolution in the context of climate change and mass extinction. It is written to be accessible to undergraduates, so, for example, geological time is discussed in terms of 'millions of years ago' as well as by the names of the ages, and English equivalents of plant names are prefered, e.g. seed plants (instead of gymnosperms), flowering plants (instead of angiosperms). * Links up the trends/patterns seen in the fossil flora from the earliest green algae through to the present day. * Covers the whole geological timescale, but focuses the chapters on periods when major evolutionary changes occurred. * Special Biome Maps indicate the general trends in changing global plant distribution through time.