Cooksonia: A Birthday Tribute

First off Happy Birthday Mr. Darwin. In honor of the giant of biology I thought about a short post to talk about a really cool plant.

Cooksonia sp. 

This early land plant was probably one of the first land plants. Growing sometime between the late Silurian and the early Devonian (about 430 mya!), it would mark the eventual colonization and dominance of land plants in our terrestrial ecosystems.

Cooksonia looks more like a lichen than it does current extant plants, and it lacked a vascular system and seeds or flowers (all of which came much much later).


Happy Birthday Mr. Darwin.