A Charcoalified Ovule Adapted for Wind Dispersal and Deterring Herbivory from the Late Viséan (Carboniferous) of Scotland

Abstract

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Reconstructing development of the earliest seed integuments raises a new hypothesis for the evolution of ancestral seed‐bearing structures

“…360 million years ago, was a key event in land plant evolution leading to a fundamentally new kind of reproductive strategy that overcame the evolutionary bottleneck of pteridophytic ‘free sporing’ reproduction (Rothwell, 1986; Bateman & DiMichele, 1994). Seeds allowed increased independence from free water for reproduction (Bateman & DiMichele, 1994), and enabled the colonization of drier and upland habitats (Prestianni & Gerrienne, 2010; Scott et al ., 2019), as well as enabling advanced reproductive traits such as pollination drops to entrap pollen (Rothwell, 1977) and embryo dormancy as a new strategy to increase the chance of offspring surviving (Mapes et al ., 1989).…”