Timescale of
early land plant evolution: controlling for competing topologies and dating strategies on divergence time estimates.
Evolution of alluvial mudrock forced by
early land plants.
New research suggests
these early land plants helped shape Earth's surface by creating clay - rich river deposits.
THE fossilised reproductive parts of an ancient liverwort have provided the first convincing evidence that these cousins of the mosses were
the earliest land plants.
Early land plants had already started leaking oxygen into the atmosphere, creating soils and providing food and shelter for animals, and the evolution of trees upped the pace of change.
Plant scientists once considered liverwort the most primitive existing plant because it lacks roots and pores for gas and water exchange, but a few recent studies had suggested that liverwortlike plants were not
the earliest land plants.
These thicker - rooted plants employ what the authors call a «conservative» strategy — similar to that of Earth's
earliest land plants — that relies on the soil fungi prevalent in wet, warm tropical and subtropical soils to provide nutrients.
One difficulty in the study is that the relationships between
the earliest land plants are not known.
«We used different assumptions on the relationships between land plants and found this did not impact the age of
the earliest land plants,» the authors said.
Not exact matches
In the
early 2000s Murrin Bridge Vineyard, on Wiradjuri
land in the Riverina in NSW, became the first Indigenous - owned wine business in Australia when it released the inaugural vintages of chardonnay and shiraz from vines
planted in the late 1990s.
The
land was polluted in the
early 1900s by waste from the Solvay Process Co.'s soda ash production and later by a concrete batch
plant and a metals scrap yard, as well as leaks from large oil storage tanks.
In recent years our incredibly varied geology has provided the oldest known vascular
land plants, evidence of the oldest herbivores, as well as the
earliest examples of terrestrial footprints («Did centipedes take the first steps on terra firma?»
The fossil, taken from amber mines in Myanmar, dates 97 - 110 million years ago to the
early - to - mid Cretaceous, when the
land was still dominated by dinosaurs and conifers, but the
earliest flowering
plants, grasses and small mammals were beginning to evolve.
It now seems that the tactic may have arisen far
earlier, about 440 million to 470 million years ago, shortly after
plants first colonized
land.
The
early presence of
plants and fungi on
land would have reduced the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, producing a cooling effect, the authors note.
Land plants and fungi may have arisen far
earlier than previously thought, according to a study published today in the journal Science.
Some of these, such as the genes that help mosses come back to life after being dried out, are shared with other
land plants and so evolved even
earlier in
plant evolution.
While the oldest known fossils of
land plants are 420 million years old, researchers have now determined that pond scum first made landfall almost 100 million years
earlier.
«The pattern of co-occurring species remained stable through the evolution of
land organisms from the
earliest tetrapods through dinosaurs, flowering
plants and mammals,» said Anna K. Behrensmeyer, a paleobiologist with the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History and a co-author of the study.
By studying liverworts - which diverged from other
land plants early in the history of
plant evolution - researchers from the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge have found that the relationship between
plants and filamentous microbes not only dates back millions of years, but that modern
plants have maintained this ancient mechanism to accommodate and respond to microbial invaders.
The remarkable
plant fossil preservation retains the structure of individual cells, thereby providing detailed scientific data regarding the rapid adaptation and
early colonization of the
land by
plants.
New research has wound back the evolutionary clock to determine that
plants likely invaded dry
land much
earlier, about 500 million years ago.
Early land life looked something like the
plants coating this lava field in Iceland.
Growing up in public housing in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Drew's process is in uenced by his
early memories of an adjacent
land ll and rendering
plant for soap.
The continued shrinkage of thaw ponds could bring significant changes to local ecosystems, as spruce forest is likely to supplant tundra as the dominant
land cover.14, 20 This could lead to a northward advance of some species of
plants and other trees, while leaving resident vegetation more vulnerable to
early mortality — potentially further disrupting the climate.14, 20,21
Lower latitude
land tempertures ARE rising, ARE above
earlier normals, most likely because of the darker albedo of increased
plant and tree growth across the tundras, grassland, and forests.
Although several large - scale solar projects in California have sputtered (including two from BrightSource) and technical challenges are considerable, the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of
Land Management (BLM) announced a move in
early July to prioritize more than 300,000 acres of public
lands in six Western states for use by utility - scale solar
plants, with nearly half of that acreage in California.