The Evolution of Plants

• This is the most accessible, modern, and comprehensive book on plant evolution ever published.
• ACCESSIBLE: Written in plain English to address an undergraduate audience. The authors avoid unnecessary jargon, for example giving geological time in terms of millions of years ago as well as names of the ages, and in using English equivalents for plant names more frequently than their latinate counterparts, e.g. seed plants (instead of gymnosperms), flowering plants (instead of angiosperms).
• MODERN: Includes consideration of the evidence from molecular biology; considers the current status of ancient DNA and the biomolecular record in plant evolutionary research.
• COMPREHENSIVE: Special 'Biome Maps' show the flora covering the Earth at different ages in the past. The book traces the patterns seen in fossil flora from the earliest green algae through to the present day.
• Focuses on periods of major evolutionary change.
• Addresses the rates and timing of the evolutionary change seen in the plant fossil record, and suggests possible driving mechanisms.

Readership: First-year biology/botany undergraduates, and second-years on an evolution option.

K. J. Willis, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, and J. C. McElwain, Lecturer in Palaeobotany and Plant Palaeoecology, University College Dublin

"Essential and accessible reading for any student of _ evolution." - The Biologist, 2002

"The text is well written for an upper division undergraduate or beginning graduate student audience and attempts to incorporate a contemporary perspective on phylogenetics and paleoecology of the major groups of land plants, drawing on current literature throughout." - Stephen L. Jessup, Southern Oregon University, USA

"Innovative, up to date, more incisive than many comparable level texts, bringing together physical and biological scientific enquiry in an exciting way." - Nigel Brown, University of Wales, Bangor

"This is the finest palaeobotanical textbook for decades, and one that captures extremely well the exciting renaissance the subject is currently experiencing." - Geological Magazine, 140, 2003

1: The evolutionary record and methods of reconstruction
2: Earliest forms of plant life
3: The colonization of land
4: The first forests
5: Major emergence of the seed plants
6: Flowering plant origins
7: The past 65 million years
8: Mass extinctions and persistent populations
9: Ancient DNA and the biomolecular record
10: Evolutionary theories and the plant fossil record