Paleobotany

Paleobotany studies fossil plants and their evolution through geological time, using preserved remains and traces to reconstruct ancient vegetation and environments.

Plant fossil: A preserved plant, plant part, or trace of plant activity from the geological past. The central evidence paleobotanists identify and interpret.
Paleobotanical reconstruction: The inference of past plant forms, communities, and environments from fossil evidence. It brings scattered fossil observations into coherent accounts of ancient vegetation.
Coal: A carbon-rich sedimentary rock formed chiefly from accumulated and altered plant matter. Coal deposits preserve evidence of the ancient vegetation that supplied their organic matter.
Rhynie chert: An Early Devonian fossil deposit in Scotland that preserves plants and other organisms in exceptional anatomical detail. Its cellular preservation reveals early land-plant structures and habitats.
Fossil record: The total collection of fossils and their distribution through geological time and across rock formations. Its gaps constrain what can be inferred about plant evolution.
Fossilization: The physical, chemical, and biological processes by which remains or traces become fossils. It determines which plant structures survive and enter the fossil record.
Biostratigraphy: The correlation and relative dating of rock layers using their fossil content. Plant fossils help establish the ages and correlations of sedimentary strata.
Carboniferous rainforest collapse: A late Carboniferous reduction and fragmentation of tropical rainforests around 305 million years ago. Its fossil plants document a major reorganization of tropical ecosystems.
Glossopteris: An extinct seed-plant genus known from distinctive tongue-shaped leaves across southern Pangaea. Its broad fossil distribution helped support past continental connections.
Lazarus taxon: A taxon that disappears from the fossil record for an interval and later reappears. Missing intervals can make plant lineages seem to vanish and return.

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