Land Plants Colonized Earth 100 Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought

[Judi Lynn]

20 February 2018, 9:24 pm EST By Samriddhi Dastidar Tech Times

Scientists have been trying to establish an approximate date for the birth of land plants for decades. However, they lacked evidence in the form of hard shells or backbones as plants leave behind little fossil records. Moreover, biologists always felt that even the oldest fossils of plants do not exactly represent their earliest timeline.

Now, a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Feb. 19 has shown that land plants originated a hundred million years before the 420 million years that scientists had previously estimated. The results indicate that land plants' ancestor existed in the middle of the Cambrian Period, which was similar to the earliest known land animals' age.

The Importance Of Land Plants
Plants have played a crucial role in regulating the climate and atmosphere of the Earth for more than millions of years. They have a major contribution to continental rocks' chemical weathering, which is a primary step in the carbon cycle.

“[This] study has important global implications, because we know early plants cooled the climate and increased the oxygen level in the Earth’s atmosphere,” said Tim Lenton, a University of Exeter scientist who is not involved with the study.

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http://www.techtimes.com/articles/221451/20180220/land-plants-colonized-earth-100-million-years-earlier-than-previously-thought.htm