Claim CC250:
The fossil record does not show the origin of any group of
modern plants from its beginning.
Source:
Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master
Books, pp. 86-87.
Response:
- The fossil record shows the origins of several groups of modern plants.
The groups listed here are some of the most prominent:
- Land plants. Several fossils exist showing their origin (Bateman
et al. 1998; Kenrick and Crane 1997). Molecular data combined with
the fossil evidence shows that the first land plants were
liverworts (Qiu et al. 1998). A fossil Ordovician fungus (about
460 million years ago) has the same form as modern arbuscular
mycorrhizal fungi, indicating that the earliest land plants had
this kind of symbiotic relationship with fungi (Redecker et
al. 2000).
- Seed plants. The first trees were also among the first
free-sporing plants sharing characteristics with seed plants
(Meyer-Berthaud et al. 1999).
- Angiosperms. Jurassic fossils of Archaefructus show some of the
earliest and most primitive angiosperms (Sun et al. 2002). Ren
(1998) described some Jurassic flies adapted for pollination,
suggesting that angiosperms may have originated by then. Dilcher
(2000) briefly reviews angiosperm paleobotany. Major events in
their evolution were the appearance of closed carpels, bilaterally
symmetrical flowers, and large fruits.
- Monocotyledons. The early fossils of this group are meager, but
some fossils exist (Gandolfo et al. 1998).
Links:
McCourt, R. M., R. L. Chapman, M. A. Buchheim and B. D. Mishler, 1996.
Green Plants.
http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Green_plants&contgroup=Eukaryotes
(Part of
the Tree of Life Web Project. This and the pages it links to have
abundant additional references.)
References:
- Bateman, R. M. et al., 1998. Early evolution of land plants: Phylogeny,
physiology, and ecology of the primary terrestrial radiation. Annual
Review of Ecology and Systematics 29: 263-292.
- Dilcher, David, 2000. Toward a new synthesis: major evolutionary
trends in the angiosperm fossil record. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science USA 97: 7030-7036.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/13/7030
- Gandolfo, M. A., K. C. Nixon, W. L. Crepet, D. W. Stevenson and E. M.
Friis, 1998. Oldest known fossils of monocotyledons. Nature 394:
532-533.
- Kenrick, P. and P. R. Crane, 1997. The origin and early evolution of
plants on land. Nature 389: 33-39.
- Meyer-Berthaud, B., S. E. Scheckler and J. Wendt, 1999.
Archaeopteris is the earliest known modern tree. Nature 398:
700-701.
- Qiu, Y.-L., Y. Cho, J. C. Cox and J. D. Palmer, 1998. The gain
of three mitochondrial introns identifies liverworts as the earliest
land plants. Nature 394: 671-674.
- Redecker, D., R. Kodner and L. E. Graham, 2000. Glomalean fungi from
the Ordovician. Science 289: 1920-1921. See also: Blackwell,
M., 2000. Terrestrial life -- fungal from the start? Science
289: 1884-1885.
- Ren, Dong, 1998. Flower-associated Brachycera flies as fossil
evidence for Jurassic angiosperm origins. Science 280: 85-88. See
also: Labandeira, C. C., 1998. How old is the flower and the fly?
Science 280: 57-59.
- Sun, Ge, et al., 2002. Archefructaceae, a new basal angiosperm
family. Science 296: 899-904. See also: Stokstad, Erik, 2002.
Fossil plants hints how first flowers bloomed. Science 296: 821.
Further Reading:
Bateman, R. M. et al, 1998. Early evolution of land plants: Phylogeny,
physiology, and ecology of the primary terrestrial radiation. Annual
Review of Ecology and Systematics 29: 263-292. (technical)
created 2003-8-8
