Full Description
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 resume 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.
Table of Contents
Preface
Preface to First Edition
1. Introduction
2. Plant fossils: preservation, preparation and
age determination
3. The fossil record: systematics,
reconstruction and nomenclature
4. Life in the Precambian
5. Diversification of the Fungi
6. Diversification among the algae and related
plants
7. How the land turned green: speculation
8. How the land turned green: Bryophyta
9. How the land turned green: vascular plants,
primitive types
10. The evolution of microphylls and adaxial
sporangia
11. The isoetalean clade
12. Paleoecology of the Pennsylvanian coal
swamps
13. More diversity in the Devonian:
Trimerophytopsida
14. The origin of the Sphenopsida
15. Unique and extinct: the Upper Paleozoic
sphenophylls
16. The origin of the horsetails
17. Putative ferns of the Paleozoic
18. The emergence of the Marattiales and
Ophioglossales
19. Filicales of the Carboniferous
20. The emergence of the modern Filicales,
Salviniales and Marsileales
21. Free-sporing plants with gymnospermous
secondary wood
22. Gymnosperm reproduction: early evolution
23. Paleozoic gymnosperms with fernlike leaves
24. Cycads: origins and relationships
25. The enigmatic cycadeoids
26. More innovation and diversification among
gymnosperms
27. The record of a living fossil: Ginkgo
28. The first coniferophytes
29. The diversification of conifers and taxads
30. The origin and early evolution of
angiosperms
31. Angiosperms: diversification, radiation,
and modernization
32. Major evolutionary events and trends: in
retrospect
Index.
