Home / Introductions to both Fossil and Recent Plant Taxa / Seed Plants in General

F.E. Arce and A.I. Lutz (2010): Fructificaciones de la Formación Los Rastros, Triásico Superior, Provincia de San Juan, Argentina (in Spanish). PDF file, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Geológicas, 27: 32-42. Triassic fructifications (Umkomasia, Peltaspermum, Andersonia, Matatiella, Telemachus) from Argentina and elsewhere in Gondwana. See also here.

C.C. Baskin and J.M. Baskin (2023): The rudimentary embryo: an early angiosperm invention that contributed to their dominance over gymnosperms. Free access, Seed Science Research, 33: 63–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0960258523000168.
Note table 1: Information about fossil ovules, seeds and embryos of gymnosperms from the Upper Devonian to Late Cretaceous.
"... we explore the origin of the rudimentary embryo, its relationship to other kinds of plant embryos and its role in the diversification of angiosperms.
[...] We conclude that the rudimentary embryo was one of many new developments of angiosperms that contributed to their great success on earth ..."

The Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), University of California at Berkeley: Introduction to the Spermatophytes: The seed plants.

britannica.com: Gymnosperm.
This expired link is available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

The Canadian Encyclopedia:
Seed Plants.

! M.W. Chase et al. (1993): Phylogenetics of seed plants: an analysis of nucleotide sequences from the plastid gene rbcL. In PDF, Annals of the Missouri Bot. Gard., 80.

Shu-Miaw Chaw et al. (2000): Seed plant phylogeny inferred from all three plant genomes: Monophyly of extant gymnosperms and origin of Gnetales from conifers. PDF file, PNAS, 97. See also here.

M.J. Donoghue and J.A. Doyle (2000): Seed plant phylogeny: Demise of the anthophyte hypothesis?. Free access, Current Biology, 10: R106-R109.
See also here.
"... Recent molecular phylogenetic studies indicate, surprisingly, that Gnetales are related to conifers, or even derived from them ..."

! M.J. Donoghue (1989): Phylogenies and the analysis of evolutionary sequences, with examples from seed plants. Open access, Evolution, 43.

! Christopher J. Earle (server space has been provided by the Department of Botany, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany): The Gymnosperm Database. Currently the database provides basic information for all species and higher-ranked taxa of the gymnosperms, i.e., conifers, cycads, and their allies. You may navigate from the Gymnosperm Database Site Map All Taxa on the Gymnosperm Database.

! E.M. Friis et al. (2013): New Diversity among Chlamydospermous Seeds from the Early Cretaceous of Portugal and North America. Free accesss, International Journal of Plant Sciences, 174: 530–558.
"... The material is based on numerous charcoalified and lignitic specimens recovered from Early Cretaceous mesofossil floras [...]
! Attenuation-based synchrotron-radiation x-ray tomographic microscopy (SRXTM) and phase-contrast x-ray tomographic microscopy (PCXTM) were carried out [...]
! Volume rendering (voltex), which provides transparent reconstructions, was also used for the virtual sections ..."

The Groningen Institute of Archaeology:
Digital Seed Atlas of the Netherlands.
Still available via Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
The Digital Seed Atlas of the Netherlands is part of The Digital Plant Atlas, an international project that makes a unique contribution to the identification of seeds, fruits, roots, tubers, bulbs, stem fragments, leaves, flowers, buds and resins. The plant parts are illustrated with high-quality colour photographs and accompanied by a scale and their scientific name.
See also here, and there.

I.B. Huegele and S.R. Manchester (2020): An Early Paleocene Carpoflora from the Denver Basin of Colorado, USA, and Its Implications for Plant-Animal Interactions and Fruit Size Evolution. Free access, Int. J. Plant Sci., 181: 646–665.

A.A. Klymiuk et al. (2022): A novel cupulate seed plant, Xadzigacalix quatsinoensis gen. et sp. nov., provides new insight into the Mesozoic radiation of gymnosperms. In PDF, American Journal of Botany. See also here.
Note figure 30: Cupulate Mesozoic gymnosperms.

Gerhard Leubner Lab, University Freiburg, Germany: Seed Evolution. Go to: Angiosperm seed evolution and species diversification.

Gerhard Leubner, The Seed Biology Place, Molecular Plant Sciences, University Freiburg, Germany: Seed evolution. Origin and evolution of the seed habit. See also: Seed dictionary English-German.

A. Linkies et al. (2010): The evolution of seeds. PDF file, New Phytologist.

! Palaeobotanical Research Group, Münster, Westfälische Wilhelms University, Münster, Germany.
History of Palaeozoic Forests, EARLIEST SEED PLANTS. Link list page with rankings and brief explanations. Images of Moresnetia, Moresnetia zaleskyi, Elkinsia. See also: CALLIPTERIDS. Images of Autunia conferta, Rhachiphyllum schenkii.
Snapshots provided by the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! Palaeobotanical Research Group, Münster, Westfälische Wilhelms University, Münster, Germany.
History of Palaeozoic Forests, THE EARLY FORESTS AND THE PROGYMNOSPERMS. Link list page with rankings and brief explanations. Images of Archaeopteris, Tetraxylopteris schmidtii, Callixylon, Archaeopteris gaspensis, Archaeopteris halliana, Archaeopteris hibernica.
This expired link is available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

The New York Botanical Garden, Herbarium: Catalog of North American Gymnosperms. The Herbarium of The New York Botanical Garden has completed cataloging its gymnosperms from North America north of Mexico. These records represent those specimens collected in Greenland, Canada, and the United States (excluding Hawaii), and include non-native species cultivated in North America.

Dan Nickrent and Karen Renzaglia, Department of Plant Biology, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale: Land Plants Online. Snapshot taken by the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! J.M. Pettitt and C.B. Beck (1968): Archaeosperma arnoldii: a cupulate seed from the Upper Devonian of North America. In PDF, Contrib. Mus. Paleontol. Univ. Mich., 22: 139–154.

C. Prestianni et al. (2013): Were all devonian seeds cupulate? A reinvestigation of Pseudosporogonites hallei, Xenotheca bertrandii, and Aglosperma spp. In PDF, Int. J. Plant Sci. 174, 832–851.

K.M. Pryer et al. (2001): Horsetails and ferns are a monophyletic group and the closest living relatives to seed plants. Abstract, Nature, 409: 618-622.
! See also here (in PDF).

M.A. Romanova et al. (2023): All together now: Cellular and molecular aspects of leaf development in lycophytes, ferns, and seed plants. In PDF, Front. Ecol. Evol., 11: 1097115. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2023.1097115. See also here.
"... To understand leaf origin in sporophytes of land plants, we have combined the available molecular and structural data on development of leaves with different morphologies in different plant lineages ..."
Note figure 10: Phylogenetic tree for land plants and their structural and regulatory innovations.
Figure 11: Hypothesized scenario for the evolutionary emergence of leaves in lycophytes.

! P.J. Rudall (2021): Evolution and patterning of the ovule in seed plants. Free access, Biological Reviews. See also here.

H.J. Sims (2012): The evolutionary diversification of seed size: using the past to understand the present. Open access, Evolution, 66: 1636–1649, https://doi.org/10.1111.
"... The fossil record indicates that the oldest seed plants had relatively small seeds, but the Mississippian seed size envelope increased significantly with the diversification of larger seeded lineages
[...] Quantitative measures of preservation suggest that, although our knowledge of Paleozoic seeds is far from complete, the evolutionary trend in seed size is unlikely to be an artifact of taphonomy ..."

H. Wang et al. (2013): Fruits, seeds, and flowers from the Warman clay pit (middle Eocene Claiborne Group), western Tennessee, USA. In PDF, Palaeontologia Electronica. See also here.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
! Spermatophyte.
Samenpflanzen (in German).

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