page_title: Paleobotany
section_title: Fossil groups of plants
hierarchical_section_title: Paleobotany / Fossil groups of plants
caption_attribution_description: English: Stigmaria, a fossil tree root. Upper Carboniferous of northeastern Ohio.
context_page_description: Paleobotany, which is also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments, and the evolutionary history of plants, with a bearing upon the evolution of life in general. A synonym is paleophytology. It is a component of paleontology and paleobiology. The prefix palaeo- means "ancient, old", and is derived from the Greek adjective παλαιός, palaios. Paleobotany includes the study of terrestrial plant fossils, as well as the study of prehistoric marine photoautotrophs, such as photosynthetic algae, seaweeds or kelp. A closely related field is palynology, which is the study of fossilized and extant spores and pollen.
  Paleobotany is important in the reconstruction of ancient ecological systems and climate, known as paleoecology and paleoclimatology respectively; and is fundamental to the study of green plant development and evolution. Paleobotany has also become important to the field of archaeology, primarily for the use of phytoliths in relative dating and in paleoethnobotany.
context_section_description: Some plants have remained almost unchanged throughout earth's geological time scale. Horsetails had evolved by the Late Devonian, early ferns had evolved by the Mississippian, conifers by the Pennsylvanian. Some plants of prehistory are the same ones around today and are thus living fossils, such as Ginkgo biloba and Sciadopitys verticillata. Other plants have changed radically, or became extinct.
  Examples of prehistoric plants are:
  Araucaria mirabilis
  Archaeopteris
  Calamites
  Dillhoffia
  Glossopteris
  Hymenaea protera
  Nelumbo aureavallis
  Pachypteris
  Palaeoraphe
  Peltandra primaeva
  Protosalvinia
  Trochodendron nastae
caption: Stigmaria, a common fossil tree root. Upper Carboniferous of northeastern Ohio.
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