Plant remains can preserve a critical part of history of life on Earth. While telling the fascinating evolutionary story of plants and vegetation across the last 500 million years, An Introduction to Plant Fossils also crucially offers non-specialists a practical guide to studying, dealing with and interpreting plant fossils. It shows how various techniques can be used to reveal the secrets of plant fossils and how to identify common types, such as compressions and impressions. Incorporating the concepts of evolutionary floras, this second edition includes revised data on all main plant groups, the latest approaches to naming plant fossils using fossil-taxa and techniques such as tomography. With extensive illustrations of plant fossils and living plants, An Introduction to Plant Fossils encourages readers to think of fossils as once-living organisms. It is written for students on introductory or intermediate courses in palaeobotany, palaeontology, plant evolutionary biology and plant science, and for amateurs interested in studying plant fossils.Contents 1. Introduction 2. Highlights of palaeobotanical study 3. Studying plant fossils 4. Early land plants 5. Lycophytes 6. Sphenophytes 7. Ferns 8. Early gymnosperms 9. Modern gymnosperms 10. Angiosperms 11. The history of land vegetation
