Paleobotany And The Evolution Of Plants, 2nd Edition

This new edition of a successful textbook describes and explains in a refreshingly clear way the origin and evolution of plants as revealed by the fossil record. It summarises paleobotanical information relevant to our present understanding of the relationships among the major plant groups, extant and extinct. As in the first edition, the text is profusely illustrated with line drawings and halftones. For those students with little knowledge of plant structure and morphology, there is a brief resume of these features of extant plants that will be needed to gain a better understanding of the fossil record. Summarising charts are also used to help students visualise the interpretative material. For this edition new material on the evolution of the angiosperms has been added, and there is a new chapter dealing with the paleoecology of ancient plants. the text has also been extensively updated to include new information on the methodology of cladistics.