Aglaophyton
Extinct (Devonian) prevascular land plant / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Aglaophyton major (or more correctly Aglaophyton majus[2]) was the sporophyte generation of a diplohaplontic, pre-vascular, axial, free-sporing land plant of the Lower Devonian (Pragian stage, around 410 million years ago). It had anatomical features intermediate between those of the bryophytes and vascular plants or tracheophytes.
Aglaophyton | |
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Reconstruction of the sporophyte of Aglaophyton, illustrating bifurcating axes with terminal sporangia, and rhizoids. Insets show a cross-section of a sporangium and the probable spores. | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Polysporangiophytes |
Genus: | †Aglaophyton D.S.Edwards 1986[1] |
Species | |
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Synonyms | |
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A. major was first described by Kidston and Lang in 1920 as the new species Rhynia major.[3] The species is known only from the Rhynie chert in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where it grew in the vicinity of a silica-rich hot spring, together with a number of associated vascular plants such as a smaller species Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii which may be interpreted as a representative of the ancestors of modern vascular plants and Asteroxylon mackei, which was an ancestor of modern clubmosses (Lycopsida).