Avi Blizovsky
The section of the core where the remains of spores and sacs were found linking them to being land plants
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Scientists have recently found the best evidence yet that the first land plants appeared 475 million years ago, about 50 million years before the fossils known so far. So far only 475 million year old spores have been found, but it has not been proven whether they came from land or are spores of aquatic plants. From a new study, it appears that the spores were found together with the spore sac that produced them, and this indicates that they belong to a terrestrial plant, says study editor Charles Wellman (Wellman) from the University of Sheffield in England.
The oldest fossils of a land plant are 425 years old and the huge time difference between the fossilized plants and the fossilized spores has puzzled scientists," said Wellman.
Now, we refer to that period for both spores and plants, said Wellman, whose paper appeared Thursday in the journal Nature.
"We have found spores many times, but we have never found the plant that produced the spores." The spores resemble those of a moss-like plant known as liverwort that may still be found today.
The spores and plants were discovered when the scientists filtered core samples at an oil exploration site. This core was at a depth of 1,485 meters in northern Oman. Vollmann's group dissolved the rock in a type of acid that doesn't destroy organic matter, then strained the acid to find the spores and plant fragments. It is estimated that plants found themselves on land long before animals, whose first fossils date back to 430 million years ago. says Wellman.
Paul Kenrick, an expert on early plants at the Natural History Museum in London, says in an accompanying commentary that the latest findings will not completely silence the skeptics. The study, however, tipped the scales in favor of those who believe that the 475-million-year-old spores came from land plants. Others have said that the oldest land plants are even 700 million years old. This is based on genetic analysis in an attempt to trace the split point between sea plants and land plants.
The latest research narrows down the age range, showing scientists that the size of the first plants was tiny. "If you were to walk on Earth then, to see something, you had to crawl on your knees and hands and look through a magnifying glass," Kenrick said. "It sounds like a kind of Sherlock Holmes-style mystery, looking through a magnifying glass at all these things. Life was on a completely different scale back then."
Land plants are older than previously thought
Scientists have recently found the best evidence yet that the first land plants appeared 475 million years ago, about 50 million years before the fossils known so far. So far only 475 million year old spores have been found, but it has not been proven whether they came from land or are spores of aquatic plants. From a new study, it appears that the spores were found together with the spore sac that produced them, and this indicates that they belong to a terrestrial plant, says study editor Charles Wellman (Wellman) from the University of Sheffield in England.
The oldest fossils of a land plant are 425 years old and the huge time difference between the fossilized plants and the fossilized spores has puzzled scientists," said Wellman.
Now, we refer to that period for both spores and plants, said Wellman, whose paper appeared Thursday in the journal Nature.
"We have found spores many times, but we have never found the plant that produced the spores." The spores resemble those of a moss-like plant known as liverwort that may still be found today.
The spores and plants were discovered when the scientists filtered core samples at an oil exploration site. This core was at a depth of 1,485 meters in northern Oman. Vollmann's group dissolved the rock in a type of acid that doesn't destroy organic matter, then strained the acid to find the spores and plant fragments. It is estimated that plants found themselves on land long before animals, whose first fossils date back to 430 million years ago. says Wellman.
Paul Kenrick, an expert on early plants at the Natural History Museum in London, says in an accompanying commentary that the latest findings will not completely silence the skeptics. The study, however, tipped the scales in favor of those who believe that the 475-million-year-old spores came from land plants. Others have said that the oldest land plants are even 700 million years old. This is based on genetic analysis in an attempt to trace the split point between sea plants and land plants.
The latest research narrows down the age range, showing scientists that the size of the first plants was tiny. "If you were to walk on Earth then, to see something, you had to crawl on your knees and hands and look through a magnifying glass," Kenrick said. "It sounds like a kind of Sherlock Holmes-style mystery, looking through a magnifying glass at all these things. Life was on a completely different scale back then."
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