Plant fossil

A plant fossil is preserved evidence of an ancient plant or its activity, including body parts, reproductive structures, and traces such as pollen.

Compression fossil: A fossil preserved as a flattened plant impression, often with a thin film of organic matter. Leaves and stems commonly survive as flattened impressions in fine sediment.
Fossilization: The processes by which remains or traces of past life become preserved in geological materials. Plant remains become fossils through the same broad processes that preserve other organisms.
Paleobotany: The study of fossil plants and their role in Earth's history. Paleobotany uses preserved plant remains to reconstruct past floras and ecosystems.
Glossopteris: An extinct seed-fern genus known for tongue-shaped leaves and widespread Permian fossils. Its fossils helped connect formerly separate southern continents in reconstructions of Gondwana.
Impression fossil: A fossil showing an organism's shape or surface without preserved original material. A leaf can leave its outline and veins in sediment even when its tissues decay.
Permineralization: Preservation in which minerals fill pores and spaces within buried tissues. Mineral-filled cell spaces can retain the structure of fossil wood and stems.
Palynology: The study of pollen, spores, and other microscopic organic particles. Fossil pollen helps reconstruct vegetation where larger plant fossils are scarce.
Rhynie chert: An Early Devonian sedimentary deposit in Scotland that preserves plants and other organisms in exceptional detail. Silica preserved early land plants and their microscopic structures three-dimensionally.
Petrifaction: Fossilization in which mineral matter replaces or fills an organism's tissues. Mineral preservation can retain internal plant anatomy, especially in wood.
Carbonization: Preservation that leaves a thin carbon-rich residue after volatile compounds are lost. This process commonly leaves flattened plant films on sedimentary rock.

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