Paleobotany

BOT 5115

Spring 2005
3 Credits
also available for credit in Geology

Instructor

Steven Manchester (steven@flmnh.ufl.edu)

Lecture

Mon, Wed, period 4 (10:40-11:30), MCCA 3170.

Laboratory

Mon, periods 7, 8 (1:55-3:50), MCCA 3170.

This course deals with the evolution of plants and their environment through geologic time, based upon the fossil record. We will begin with the earliest known life on earth and follow the history of major groups of plants through time with attention to changes in community structure. Topics to be considered include the first land plants, the radiation of growth forms including the earliest trees, evolution of the seed, and the radiation of flowering plants. Applications of paleobotany to problems of phylogeny reconstruction and interpretation of ancient climates and changing biogeographic patterns will be considered.

The laboratory will provide experience with recognition of major fossil plant groups representing different periods in Earth history, based on macroscopic and microscopic study of fossilized stems, leaves, spores, seeds, flowers, fruits and pollen. A field trip to collect fossils is also planned.

Textbook

Still to be determined. Previously we have used Paleobotany and the Evolution of Plants, 2nd ed. by Stewart and Rothwell, 1992. Additional required readings will be announced in lecture.

Grading

Two midterms covering lecture and lab (25% each), a term project presentation (20%) and a comprehensive final examination (30%). Your individual project is on a topic of your own choosing, relevant to paleobotany. It may amplify a topic treated in lecture, or introduce literature and ideas not otherwise treated in the course, and optionally may include studies of research specimens at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Lecture Topics

1. Introduction to Paleobotany
2. Origin of life, Precambrian diversification
3. Elaboration multicellular life, radiation of lower plants
4. Origin of land plants: Protracheophytes
5. Rhyniophytes, Trimerophytes, Zosterophylls
6. Lycopods of the Devonian
7. Lycopod trees as forest dominants
8. Sphenopsid evolution: the ancestors of Equisetum
9. First ferns
10. Still more ferns
11. Devonian Progymnosperms
12. The earliest seed plants
13. Paleozoic seed ferns
14. Cordaites, early coniferophytes
15. Conifer evolution and phylogeny
16. Mesozoic gymnosperms
17. Cycads, Benettitales
18. Seed plant phylogeny
19. The first flowers! Angiosperm origins, relationships
20. Early diversifying angiosperms of the Cretaceous
21. Fossil history of extant angiosperm families and genera
22. Patterns in the evolution of flowers and fruits
23. Diversification of extant angiosperm families
24. Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary and paleoclimate analyses

Laboratory Themes

1. Types of preservation--how fossils are preserved
2. Precambrian life: stromatolites, algae
3. Early land plant diversity
4. Devonian and Pennsylvanian Lycopod diversity
5. Sphenophyte diversity
6. Ferns of the Devonian, Paleozoic and Mesozoic
7. Coal ball peel preparation
8. Devonian Progymnosperms
9. Paleozoic seed ferns
10. Paleozoic and Mesozoic Coniferophytes
11. Cycads, Benettiales
12. Fossil pollen-- preparation techniques and microscopy
13. Cretaceous angiosperms
14. Angiosperm case histories

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