Researchers report a timescale for early plant evolution that integrates competing hypotheses on the evolutionary relationships between vascular and nonvascular plants using relaxed molecular clock methods; the results suggest that land plants likely arose in the Cambrian period, and that vascular plants likely first appeared between the late Ordovician period and the end of the Silurian period, a finding that places plant appearance earlier than thought and calls into question existing theories on the assembly of Earth's terrestrial biosphere.
###
Article #17-19588: "The timescale of early land plant evolution," by Jennifer Morris et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Philip C. J. Donoghue, University of Bristol, UNITED KINGDOM; e-mail: Phil.Donoghue@bristol.ac.uk
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences