Michael Wachtler
Ed. DoloMythos - San Candido
www.dolomythos.com
Euro 34,90
The origins of higher plants
A fundamental task of paleobotany is to find theories about the origin and evolution of the crown groups of different plant stems. In the Carboniferous, we find fern families, lycopods and horsetails that still exist today; fully developed and recognisable gymnosperms can be seen from the Carboniferous-Permian transition onwards. Astonishingly, these gymnosperms reached an incredible level of development more than 300 million years ago, which makes it plausible that the splitting lines are to be found in the Devonian period. In fact, in the Middle Devonian, we encounter barely recognisable ancestors of these gymnosperms, such as conifers, gingkos or cycads, as well as archaic progenitors of the ferns, clubmosses and horsetails. Further back in the Lower Devonian, the boundaries become blurry, such that references to plant families existing today are hardly imaginable.
With 300 photos and drawings
Summary
The Origins of higher plants pag. 1-16
The Middle Devonian Flora Explosion pag 17-72
Michael Wachtler and Nicolas Wachtler
Dolomythos-Museum, ISSN 2974-7376, 1/1, p. 72, year 2023
Euro 49,00
