Extremely Rare 2 Devonian Fossil Plant Archaeopteris - Earliest Know Tree Fossil
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:31688173 | Modified Item: No |
I combine shipping costs. Each item is different, so please wait with payment after purchase - I will send You a combine invoice. Usually, it will be cost of shipping the heaviest item.
Specimen: Very Rare devonian fossil plant: Archaeopteris cf. halliana. Two nice leafy twig of classic and famous Devonian fossil plant , one of the earliest known tree - arborescent plant !
Locality: &nb...sp; Poland, Holy Cross Mountains, The exact location will be included with certificate to the purchase item.
Stratigraphy: Devonian - Famennian
Age: ca. 370 - 360 MyaMatrix size : ca. 14, 5 x 11, 0 x 1, 5 cm , plants ca. 5 cm long !
Description:
Very Rare fossil plant Archaeopteris cf halliana. Two nice leafy twig on one plate. Classic Devonian fossil plant , one of the earliest known tree !
Archaeopteris is an extinct genus of tree-like plants with fern-like leaves. A useful index fossil, this tree is found in strata dating from the Upper Devonian to Lower Carboniferous (383 to 323 million years ago), and had global distribution.
Until the 2007 discovery of Wattieza, many scientists considered Archaeopteris to be the earliest known tree.
Evidence indicates that Archaeopteris preferred wet soils, growing close to river systems and in flood plain woodlands. It would have formed a significant part of the canopy vegetation of early forests. Speaking of the first appearance of Archaeopteris on the world-scene, Stephen Scheckler, a professor of biology and geological sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, says, "When [Archaeopteris] appears, it very quickly became the dominant tree all over the Earth. On all of the land areas that were habitable, they all had this tree".
Archaeopteris is a member of a group of free-sporing woody plants called the progymnosperms that are interpreted as distant ancestors of the gymnosperms. Archaeopteris reproduced by releasing spores rather than by producing seeds, but some of the species, such as Archaeopteris halliana were heterosporous, producing two types of spores. This is thought to represent an early step in the evolution of vascular plants towards reproduction by seeds, which first appeared in the earliest, long extinct, gymnosperm group, the seed ferns (Pteridospermatophyta). The conifers or Pinophyta are one of four divisions of extant gymnosperms that arose from the seed ferns during the Carboniferous period.
Archaeopteris was originally classified as a fern, and it remained classified so for over 100 years. In 1911, Russian paleontologist Mikhail Dimitrievich Zalessky described a new type of petrified wood from the Donetz Basin in Russia. He called the wood Callixylon, though he did not find any structures other than the trunk. The similarity to conifer wood was recognized. It was also noted that ferns of the genus Archaeopteris were often found associated with fossils of Callixylon. In the 1960s, paleontologist Charles B. Beck was able to demonstrate that the fossil wood known as Callixylon and the leaves known as Archaeopteris were actually part of the same plant. It was a plant with a mixture of characteristics not seen in any living plant, a link between true gymnosperms and ferns.
