Sprecher
Beschreibung
The Silurian and Devonian saw rapid ecological change on the Earth’s surface, going from ecosystems of thin soils, small plants and few large animals, to those of deeper soils, the first trees, and the first terrestrial vertebrates. But many of the most abundant organisms of the Silurian and Devonian do not have close extant relatives. These include early land plants, like the rhyniophytes and the zosterophylls, and the nematophytes, whose placement in the tree of life has been extensively debated. In order to better incorporate these organisms without clear parallels in extant lineages into our understanding of early terrestrial ecosystems, the traits of these organisms must be understood in greater detail. Using the exceptionally preserved Early Devonian fossils of the Rhynie chert, I have applied confocal laser scanning microscopy, a form a superresolution imaging, to these early land plants and nematophytes. This technique allows novel anatomical and structural details of these enigmatic organisms to be uncovered. A better understanding of the ecologically relevant traits of these key organisms will provide major insight into Silurian-Devonian terrestrial ecosystems, and improve the accuracy of ecological models of this time period.