An introduction to plant fossils

Abstract

As the title suggests, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of plant fossils and is aimed at undergraduate students and introductory-level researchers in botany, biosciences and earth sciences. In effect the book is an update on the now classic (i.e. dated and out of print) introductory text books by Chester Arnold (1947) and Harlan Banks (1970), noting that other current texts either fall below (e.g. Kenrick and Davies, 2004) or sail above this level (e.g. Taylor et al., 2009), with the latter representing a definitive reference work that is to a certain extent impregnable to introductory readers. So, we have a gap in the market, but does this fill the role? I think it does. The book combines historical accounts of subjects that shaped present understanding alongside descriptions of the major plant fossil groups and taxa, and also provides up-to-date syntheses of the materials presented as well as recommended reading should further information be required on any particular topic. The introductory sections are well organised and easy to follow and serve as a stand-alone starting point to how and why plants are preserved in deep time, with the text then progressing to cover highlights in the study of palaeobotany that have been instrumental in shaping our present knowledge, and then to techniques in the study of fossil plants. The main body of the text is divided into chapters on early land plants, lycophytes, sphenophytes, ferns, early gymnosperms, modern gymnosperms, and angiosperms, and concludes with overarching contents on the history of vegetation on land. There is an awful lot of content for a little book, and it is easy to read with the information accessible and well indexed. However, as the authors themselves concede, there is a bias in the coverage to their own expertise with particular emphasis placed on coal measures' plants and their environments from the Late Palaeozoic. This accords well with the abundance of fossil plants from the UK and how this has been taught historically in many earth science departments, but largely presents a bottom-up approach to evolution rather than the top-down treatments more typical of biological departments. In line with the authors' preference, the book adopts traditional systematic schemes rather than evolutionary systematics drawn from cladistic relationships and/or molecular sytematics of living plant groups, but the scheme used is appropriate to the fossil record and will be easy to relate to more analytical methodologies. The strength of the book comes through the detailed accounts of plant groups recognised in the fossil record and in the final chapter in which palaeogeography, palaeoclimates and environmental change are inferred through the geological record. The final chapter in itself stands out for its use of applied palaeobotany techniques and the way in which fossil plants have been integrated with other lines of evidence to provide a total-evidence approach. This is a credit to the authors and will be extremely helpful to the target audience. The illustrations are well chosen and fit into the text well, but on the whole I was disappointed by the size and quality of the images, such that the details are not always clear. All in all, a good book, and one that can be recommended to education libraries for introducing this fascinating subject.