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Fluvial landscapes diversified markedly over the 250 million years between the Cambrian and Pennsylvanian periods. The diversification occurred in tandem with the evolution of vascular plants and expanding vegetation cover. In the absence of widespread vegetation, landscapes during the Cambrian and Ordovican periods were dominated by rivers with wide sand-beds and aeolian tracts. During the late Silurian and Devonian periods, the appearance of vascular plants with root systems was associated with the development of channelled sand-bed rivers, meandering rivers and muddy floodplains. The widespread expansion of trees by the Early Pennsylvanian marks the appearance of narrow fixed channels, some representing anabranching systems, and braided rivers with vegetated islands. We conclude that the development of roots stabilized the banks of rivers and streams. The subsequent appearance of woody debris led to log jams that promoted the rapid formation of new river channels. Our contention is supported by studies of modern fluvial systems and laboratory experiments. In turn, fluvial styles influenced plant evolution as new ecological settings developed along the fluvial systems. We suggest that terrestrial plant and landscape evolution allowed colonization by an increasingly diverse array of organisms

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Mudrocks are a primary archive of Earth's history from the Archean eon to recent times, and their source-to-sink production and deposition play a central role in long-term ocean chemistry and climate regulation. Using original and published stratigraphic data from all 704 of Earth's known alluvial formations from the Archean eon (3.5 billion years ago) to the Carboniferous period (0.3 billion years ago), we prove contentions of an upsurge in the proportion of mud retained on land coeval with vegetation evolution. We constrain the onset of the upsurge to the Ordovician-Silurian and show that alluvium deposited after land plant evolution contains a proportion of mudrock that is, on average, 1.4 orders of magnitude greater than the proportion contained in alluvium from the preceding 90% of Earth's history. We attribute this shift to the ways in which vegetation revolutionized mud production and sediment flux from continental interiors.

The Palaeozoic greening of the continents -the appearance and expansion of embryophytes (land plants) in terrestrial environments -was arguably the most fundamental Phanerozoic change to the Earth system. Thirteen case studies of Cambrian to Devonian fluvial deposits from North America and Europe are documented here to illustrate the evolution of fluvial style during this period. During the Cambro-Ordovician, prior to the advent of terrestrial vegetation, fluvial systems laid down relatively coarse sands with little mud, resulting in self-formed channels and an architecture dominated by broad sheets of trough cross-beds (sheet-braided style). Similar deposits formed across a wide range of latitudes, and passed basinward into sandy coastal deposits. From the mid Ordovician onwards, an increase in floodplain mudstone corresponds broadly with the appearance of embryophytes, which would have progressively enhanced upland weathering, mud production and floodplain storage of fines. During the Late Silurian, small heterolithic channel bodies with lateral-accretion sets provide the first evidence of meandering channels, and floodplain mudstones contain more varied palaeosols, especially calcretes which appear abundantly for the first time. By the Early Devonian, channel deposits comprise sandstone lenses (channelled-braided style), probably due to the increased bank strength and cohesion and reduced potential for sediment sorting imparted by sand-mud mixtures. Muddy coastal deposits are prominent. By the Upper Devonian, fluvial deposits commonly contain fossil trees and large mainstem meandering channels with lateralaccretion sets, indicating that rooted vegetation stabilized channels. The advent of stable floodplains with levées, crevasse splays and organic litter would have encouraged the diversification of terrestrial invertebrates, which left alluvial ichnological signatures from the Late Silurian onwards.

International audienc

The colonization of land was one of the major events in Earth history, leading to the expansion of life and laying the foundations for the modern biosphere. We examined trace fossils, the record of the activities of past life, to understand how animals diversify both behaviourally and ecologically when colonizing new habitats. The faunal invasion of land was preceded by excursions of benthic animals into very shallow, marginal-marine environments during the latest Ediacaran Period and culminated in widespread colonization of non-marine niches by the end of the Carboniferous Period. Trace-fossil evidence for the colonization of new environments shows repeated early-burst patterns of maximal ichnodisparity (the degree of difference among basic trace-fossil architectural designs), ecospace occupation, and level of ecosystem engineering prior to maximal ichnodiversity. Similarities across different environments in the types of behavioural programmes employed (as represented by different trace fossils), modes of life present, and the ways in which animals impacted their environments, suggest constraints on behavioural and ecological diversification. The early-burst patterns have the hallmark of novelty events. The underlying drivers of these events likely were the extrinsic limitation of available ecospace and intrinsic controls of genomic and developmental plasticity that enabled trace-maker morphological and behavioural novelty.

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