Sprecher
Beschreibung
The Cambrian to Devonian interval witnessed the establishment and development of terrestrial ecosystems on our planet. Such major evolutionary events in life history consist of scenarios as: 1) ancestor of charophycean green algae during the Cambrian to Middle Ordovician; 2) early forms of first terrestrial, cryptospore-producing, bryophyte-like plants during from the Middle Ordovician to early Silurian; and 3) early vascular plants producing trilete spores and the emergence of the first forest till the Middle Devonian.
We, the Early Land Plant working group at NIGP, CAS, have recently conducted a series of studies on this topic based on abundant and diverse micro-, meso-, and macro- plant fossils from China and abroad, and comprehensive data analysis methods. Our studies can be summarized as below: 1) systematic reports of cryptospores from the Cambrian to Early Devonian in China and dynamic evolutionary analysis on all known cryptospores in aspect of the origin and rise of terrestrial flora; 2) palynological studies on Devonian paleosols and Paleozoic biostratigraphy; 3) micro- and macro- fossils of arthropods and protists from shallow marine deposits of the Silurian to Devonian; 4) new insights into classic vascular plant taxa, such as Aberlemnia, Zosterophyllum, and Leclercqia, from the Silurian and Devonian; 5) quantitative ecological assessments on early terrestrial global flora, concerning spatio-tempo distributions, plants’ dispersal during the Devonian and evolution of forest in geologic history; 6) paleogeographical reconstruction using occurrences data of both palynomorphs and macroplants; and 7) morphological disparity and morphospace evolution of Silurian to Devonian plants.