Page 44 - The Dinosaur Book and Other Wonders of the Prehistoric World (DK-Smithsonian)

Early life This fossil preserves

a leaf frond of one
on land of the first woody trees,
which lived about
370 million years ago.

Sciadophyton was
about 2 in (5 cm) tall. Archaeopteris
fossil
The cup-shaped
structures held the male
and female cells needed
to form new plants.
The small, scalelike leaves
soaked up sunlight and used it
to turn air and water into sugar.

Sciadophyton

Asteroxylon

Veins carrying water
through the stem allowed
Asteroxylon to grow up
to 20 in (50 cm) high.

Until about 500 million years ago, there was and broke them down to form soil, allowing early
no life on land. The continents were barren plants to get a root-hold. Spores of these plants
rock and sand like the surface of Mars. The first have been found in fossils that formed about
land organisms were probably microscopic 476 million years ago. The plants would have
bacteria that built up in mats. These were looked like Aglaophyton and Sciadophyton—
42 followed by fungi that lived off the bacterial mats simple, mosslike plants that grew close to the

US_042-043_Early_life_on_land.indd 42 26/04/18 3:30 PM