Paleobotany: some aspects of non-flowering and flowering plant evolution

When an examination of some aspects of the evolution of vascular land plants is made across broad sweeps of Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Tertiary time, three basic patterns occur in unrelated groups in vascular land plant evolution: independent evolution of similar morphologies, nearly contemporaneous evolution of similar structures and strategies, and repeated evolution of similar features or strategies at different times. Examples are given in non-flowering plants and also in the evolution of angiosperms. A database is presented to illustrate the presence of angiosperms in the Jurassic/Lower Cretaceous fossil record and the diversity and abundance of organs recovered from these early angiosperms. These data are presented as working documents with the anticipation that they may grow into a major database for interested scholars world-wide.