Researchers report a fossil plant that extends the history of a seed plant sister group. Noeggerathiales is an order of plants that lived between 323 and 252 million years ago, and although much is known about the order's structure and geographic range, a lack of preserved plant anatomy has prevented classification into the evolutionary tree of life. Jun Wang, David Dilcher, and colleagues describe a noeggerathialean plant with complete anatomical preservation from a 298-million-year-old ash deposit, including anatomical details that enable evolutionary classification. The plant species, Paratingia wuhaia, is a small woody tree, with a crown of leaves and fertile shoots that produce spores. Details of the plant's anatomy suggest that it belongs to the progymnosperm lineage. Paratingia extends the known temporal range of progymnosperms by around 60 million years and demonstrates that the spore-producing progymnosperm lineage, which is a sister group to seed plants, continued to diversify in parallel with diversification of seed-producing plants and independently developed fertile organs similar to cones, as found in Paratingia. According to the authors, the continued diversification of progymnosperms for around 110 million years after divergence from seed-producing plants and the connection of Noeggerathiales to progymnosperms clarifies the significance of the order in the plant evolutionary record.
###
Article #20-13442: "Ancient noeggerathialean reveals the seed plant sister group diversified alongside the primary seed plant radiation," by Jun Wang et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Jun Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, CHINA; email: jun.wang@nigpas.ac.cn
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences