MARCH 8, 2021

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-pompeii-prehistoric-evolutionary-secret.html

byUniversity of Birmingham

Spectacular fossil plants preserved within a volcanic ash fall in China have shed light on an evolutionary race 300 million years ago, which was eventually won by the seed-bearing plants that dominate so much of the Earth today.https://0c86406ba6a10333f3b06e42dec8e687.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

New research into fossils found at the ‘Pompeii of prehistoricplants‘, in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, reveals that the plants, called Noeggerathiales, were highly-evolved members of the lineage from which came seed plants.

Noeggerathiales were important peat-forming plants that lived around 325 to 251 million years ago. Understanding their relationships to otherplant groupshas been limited by poorly preserved examples until now.

The fossils found in China have allowed experts to work out that Noeggerathiales are more closely related to seed plants than to other fern groups.

No longer considered…