The Evolution of Plants

• This is the most accessible, modern, and comprehensive book on plant evolution ever published.
• ACCESSIBLE: Written in plain English to address an undergraduate audience. The authors avoid unnecessary jargon, for example giving geological time in terms of millions of years ago as well as names of the ages, and in using English equivalents for plant names more frequently than their latinate counterparts, e.g. seed plants (instead of gymnosperms), flowering plants (instead of angiosperms).
• MODERN: Includes consideration of the evidence from molecular biology; considers the current status of ancient DNA and the biomolecular record in plant evolutionary research
• COMPREHENSIVE: Special 'Biome Maps' show the flora covering the Earth at different ages in the past. The book traces the patterns seen in fossil flora from the earliest green algae through to the present day
• Focuses on periods of major evolutionary change
• Addresses the rates and timing of the evolutionary change seen in the plant fossil record, and suggests possible driving mechanisms

Contents

• 1 The evolutionary record and methods of reconstruction
• 2 Earliest forms of plant life
• 3 How the land turned green
• 4 The first forests
• 5 Development of the Gymnosperms
• 6 Angiosperm origins
• 7 Mass extinction
• 8 Persistent populations
• 9 Ancient DNA and the biomolecular record
• 10 Evolutionary theories and the fossil record