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Paleobotany or palaeobotany, also known as paleophytology, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant from geology contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (palaeogeography), and the evolutionary history of plants, with a bearing upon the evolution of life in general. It is a component of paleontology and paleobiology. The prefix palaeo- or paleo- means "ancient, old", and is derived from the Ancient Greek adjective παλαιός, . Paleobotany includes the study of embryophyte, as well as the study of Prehistory marine such as photosynthetic algae, or kelp. A closely related field is palynology, which is the study of fossilized and extant taxon and pollen.
Paleobotany is important in the reconstruction of ancient ecological and , known as paleoecology and paleoclimatology respectively. It is fundamental to the study of green plant development and evolution. Paleobotany is a historical science much like its adjacent, paleontology. Because of the understanding that paleobotany gives to archeologists, it has become important to the field of archaeology as a whole. primarily for the use of in relative dating and in paleoethnobotany.Cabanes, D. (2020). Phytolith Analysis in Paleoecology and Archaeology. In Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology (pp. 255-288) doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-42622-4_11
The study and discipline of paleobotany was seen as far back as the 19th century. Known as the “Father of Paleobotany”, French botanist Adolphe-Theodore Brongniart was a sufficient figure in this emergence of Paleobotany, known for his work on the relationship between the living and extinct plant life. This work not only progressed paleobotany but also the understanding of the earth and its longevity in actuality and the organic matter that existed over the earth’s timeline. Paleobotany also succeeded in the hands of German paleontologist Ernst Friedrich von Schlothiem, and Czech nobleman and scholar, Kaspar Maria von Sternberg.
Paleoecology is a similar study to that of paleontology, but paleoecology uses more methodology from the Biology and Geology rather than from an Anthropology standpoint as paleontologists do.
Similar to paleobotany, we can tell a great deal of information about the environment and biome at the time these existed prehistorically. These particles also help geologists identify and date the Stratum of . It is also used to find natural oils and Natural gas within these rock layers for extraction. Besides uncovering documentation of our past environmental conditions, palynology can also tell us about animal diets, historical standings of human Allergy, and reveal evidence in crime cases.
An important early land plant fossil locality is the Rhynie chert, found outside the village of Rhynie in Scotland. The Rhynie chert is an Early Devonian sinter (hot spring) deposit composed primarily of Silicon dioxide. It is exceptional due to its preservation of several different of plants, from mosses and to more unusual, problematic forms. Many fossil animals, including and , are also found in the Rhynie chert, and it offers a unique window into the history of early terrestrial life.
Plant-derived macrofossils become abundant in the Late Devonian including tree trunks, , and . The earliest tree was once thought to be Archaeopteris, which bears simple, fern-like Leaf spirally arranged on branches atop a conifer-like trunk, although it is now known to be the recently discovered Wattieza.
Widespread coal swamp deposits across North America and Europe during the Carboniferous Period contain a wealth of fossils containing Lepidodendron up to 30 m tall, abundant Gymnosperm, such as conifers and seed ferns, and countless smaller, .
Angiosperms () evolved during the Mesozoic, and flowering plant pollen and leaves first appeared during the Early Cretaceous, approximately 130 million years ago.
Because of this, paleobotanists usually assign different taxonomic names to different parts of the plant in different modes of preservation. For instance, in the subarborescent Palaeozoic Calamites, an impression of a leaf might be assigned to the genus Annularia, a compression of a cone assigned to Palaeostachya, and the stem assigned to either Calamites or Arthroxylon depending on whether it is preserved as a cast or a petrifaction. All of these fossils may have originated from the same parent plant but they are each given their own taxonomic name. This approach to naming plant fossils originated with the work of Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart.
For many years this approach to naming plant fossils was accepted by paleobotanists but not formalised within the International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature. Eventually, and proposed a set of formal provisions, the essence of which was introduced into the 1952 International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. These early provisions allowed fossils representing particular parts of plants in a particular state of preservation to be placed in organ-genera. In addition, a small subset of organ-genera, to be known as form-genera, were recognised based on the artificial taxa introduced by Brongniart mainly for foliage fossils. The concepts and regulations surrounding organ- and form-genera were modified within successive codes of nomenclature, reflecting a failure of the paleobotanical community to agree on how this aspect of plant taxonomic nomenclature should work (a history reviewed by Cleal and Thomas in 2020). The use of organ- and fossil-genera was abandoned with the St Louis Code, and replaced by "morphotaxa".
The situation in the Vienna Code of 2005 was that any plant taxon whose type is a fossil, except , can be described as a morphotaxon, a particular part of a plant preserved in a particular way. Although the name is always fixed to the type specimen, the circumscription (i.e. range of specimens that may be included within the taxon) is defined by the taxonomist who uses the name. Such a change in circumscription could result in an expansion of the range of plant parts or preservation states that could be incorporated within the taxon. For instance, a fossil-genus originally based on compressions of ovules could be used to include the multi-ovulate cupules within which the ovules were originally borne. A complication can arise if, in this case, there was an already named fossil-genus for these cupules. If paleobotanists were confident that the type of the ovule fossil-genus and of the cupule fossil-genus could be included in the same genus, then the two names would compete as to being the correct one for the newly emended genus. In general, there would be competing priority whenever plant parts that had been given different names were discovered to belong to the same species. It appeared that morphotaxa offered no real advantage to paleobotanists over normal fossil-taxa and the concept was abandoned with the 2011 botanical congress and the 2012 International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants.
Examples of prehistoric plants are:
Plant fossils
A plant fossil is any preserved part of a plant that has long since died. Such fossils may be prehistoric impressions that are many millions of years old, or bits of charcoal that are only a few hundred years old. Prehistoric plants are various groups of plants that lived before recorded history (before about 3500 BC).
Preservation of plant fossils
Plant fossils can be preserved in a variety of ways, each of which can give different types of information about the original parent plant. These modes of preservation may be summarised in a paleobotanical context as follows.
Fossil-taxa
Plant fossils almost always represent disarticulated parts of plants; even small herbaceous plants are rarely preserved whole. The few examples of plant fossils that appear to be the remains of whole plants are in fact incomplete as the internal cellular tissue and fine micromorphological detail is normally lost during fossilization. Plant remains can be preserved in a variety of ways, each revealing different features of the original parent plant.
Fossil groups of plants
Some plants have remained almost unchanged throughout earth's geological time scale. had evolved by the Late Devonian, early ferns had evolved by the Mississippian, Pinophyta by the Pennsylvanian. Some plants of prehistory are the same ones around today and are thus , such as Ginkgo and Sciadopitys. Other plants have changed radically, or became extinct.
Notable paleobotanists
See also
Further reading
External links
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