Invasion Of Land Research Articles

Mitochondrial mRNA Processing in the Chlorophyte Alga Pediastrum duplex and Streptophyte Alga Chara vulgaris Reveals an Evolutionary Branch in Mitochondrial mRNA Processing

Mitochondria carry the remnant of an ancestral bacterial chromosome and express those genes with a system separate and distinct from the nucleus. Mitochondrial genes are transcribed as poly-cistronic primary transcripts which are post-transcriptionally processed to create individual translationally competent mRNAs. Algae post-transcriptional processing has only been explored in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (Class: Chlorophyceae) and the mature mRNAs are different than higher plants, having no 5′ UnTranslated Regions (UTRs), much shorter and more variable 3′ UTRs and polycytidylated mature mRNAs. In this study, we analyzed transcript termini using circular RT-PCR and PacBio Iso-Seq to survey the 3′ and 5′ UTRs and termini for two green algae, Pediastrum duplex (Class: Chlorophyceae) and Chara vulgaris (Class: Charophyceae). This enabled the comparison of processing in the chlorophyte and charophyte clades of green algae to determine if the differences in mitochondrial mRNA processing pre-date the invasion of land by embryophytes. We report that the 5′ mRNA termini and non-template 3′ termini additions in P. duplex resemble those of C. reinhardtii, suggesting a conservation of mRNA processing among the chlorophyceae. We also report that C. vulgaris mRNA UTRs are much longer than chlorophytic examples, lack polycytidylation, and are polyadenylated similar to embryophytes. This demonstrates that some mitochondrial mRNA processing events diverged with the split between chlorophytic and streptophytic algae.

Coronene, mercury, and biomarker data support a link between extinction magnitude and volcanic intensity in the Late Devonian

The Late Devonian biodiversity crisis, one of the big five Phanerozoic diversity depletions, is composed of a series of extinction events broadly coincident with the invasion of land by plants and vertebrates. These extinctions may have been triggered by volcanism, as sedimentary mercury enrichments are associated with the two main extinctions, the Kellwasser and Hangenberg crises. However, the sources of this mercury and its relation to volcanic style are not known. Furthermore, any links between the magnitudes of volcanic emissions and biodiversity loss have not been explored. To address these issues, we develop a new suite a geochemical data from shallow water sedimentary rocks in France, Belgium, and China for three Late Devonian crises – the Kellwasser and Hangenberg events, as well as for the preceding Frasnian extinction. We report paired coronene – mercury data as a refined proxy for large igneous province (LIP) emplacement, and we use cadalene and dibenzofuran biomarkers as proxies for terrestrial ecological disturbance. Coronene is a highly condensed six-ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), which requires significantly higher energy to form as compared to smaller PAHs; coronene enrichment has been found only in LIP volcanic emission and projectile impact events. Our data show that coronene and mercury coincidentally peaked at only the environmental and biotic events, demonstrating that pulses of LIP volcanism are tightly associated with the Late Devonian crises. In addition, mercury concentration is highly correlated with cadalene and dibenzofuran abundance during the events only in nearshore settings, indicating fluxes of soil erosion. Finally, we observe a correlation between coronene index and extinction magnitude for the three events, suggesting a link between temperatures of sills and lavas during LIP emplacement, pressure of evolved volatiles, and global climatic effects.

One event, four historians Objective approach of Jovini, Ibn Futi, Minhaj Siraj and Wassaf to the fall of Baghdad

The Mongol invasion of Islamic lands and the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate is one of the most important events of the seventh century AH, which has been considered by historians from different dimensions. Historians of the patriarchal era (Jovini, Ibn Futi, Minhaj Siraj Jawzjani, Wasaf) have come close to historical objectivity in narrating the fall of Baghdad. It is assumed that the solidity of the narrator's method in the narrative affects the two principles of criticism and analysis and his view of what history is in achieving historical objectivity. In fact, the narrator's knowledge of the intellectual and narrative sciences and their critical causal approach bring them closer to historical objectivity.

Valor de conservación de un bosque en el sureste de la Amazonia Peruana: El caso de Madre de Dios

Los bosques de la Amazonia de Madre de Dios (Perú) vienen siendo deforestados. La deforestación es impulsada por el crecimiento poblacional urbano, agricultura, minería aurífera desarrollo de infraestructura y la falta de planeación urbana y territorial. La pérdida de bosques tiene varias consecuencias negativas, como la inmigración y la pobreza persistente. El estudio analiza el valor de conservación de un de bosque prístino de terraza alta, ubicada en el sureste de la Amazonia peruana, área que soporta la presión de amenazas de deforestación e invasión de tierras acrecentada desde el acondicionamiento del corredor vial construida por la Iniciativa para la Integración de la Infraestructura Regional Suramericana (IIRSA). Para ello, se planteó el método de valoración contingente (MVC) a través del modelo logit dicotómico para definir la disposición a pagar (DAP) de los encuestados sobre precios propuestos de un escenario hipotético conservar el bosque como estrategia para fortalecer sus capacidades en la educación de profesionales, la población, y la investigación como motor en la generación del conocimiento. El resultado muestra que la DAP promedio para implementar el programa de conservación fue de S/ 17.49 (USD 5.16) como pago único por año. Este valor presenta una alta relación significativa con las variables: educación, importancia de la existencia del bosque, conocimiento ambiental, e ingresos, en el modelo econométrico para aceptar la propuesta. Finalmente, el bosque es importante por sí mismo para la población, y manifiestan una disposición positiva para su conservación.

Evictions, Demolitions, and Responsive Constitutionalism in the COVID-19 Lockdown in Cape Town

In this article, I comment on the judicial responses to several incidents of eviction and demolition of illegal structures during the COVID-19 lockdown by Cape Town City officials, including members of the Anti Land Invasion Unit. The cases implicate complex legal questions, many of which are heavily contingent on factual situations: first, whether it was permissible for City Officials to conduct evictions and demolitions when they had been specifically disallowed by section 36(1) of Alert Level 3 Regulations; second, whether the protections afforded by the PIE Act extends to structures which may not be fully completed nor occupied; third, the relationship between the common law remedy of counter-spoliation and its applicability to situations of land invasion where housing rights and judicially supervised eviction and demolitions are concerned, and fourth, the constitutionality of the manner of determination of whether a structure is built or occupied – the response to which determines whether the provisions of the PIE Act kick in. Finally, I also comment on the accountability of private actors tendered to carry out evictions and demolitions – which may create perverse incentives to maximize their numbers, with little regard for constitutional safeguards.

السياسة الخارجية لأسرة يوان المغولية تجاه دول الشرق الأقصى The Foreign Policy of the Mongol Yuan Dynastytowards Far Eastern Countries

يتحدث موضوع السياسة الخارجية لأسرة يوان المغولية تجاه دول الشرق الأقصى عن سياسة دول مغول يوان تجاه کل من کوريا واليابان وجزر جنوب شرق آسيا وقد عمل قوبلاي على ترسيخ علاقته مع العائلة الملکية الکورية؛ فزوج إحدى بناته لولي العهد الکوري کي يضمن ولاء البلاد لأسرته الحاکمة في الصين، وهکذا أصبحت کوريا مستعمرة مغولية صينية. أما بالنسبة للعلاقة مع اليابان فلم تکن العلاقات ودية کما کانت مع کوريا، فقد سعى قوبلاي عدة مرات لغزو اليابان، وکانت المرة الأولى سنة 673ه/ 1274م، أما الغزو الثاني فکان سنة 680ه/ 1281م، أما بالنسبة لجزر جنوب شرق آسيا فقد استطاع قوبلاي فرض سيادته على جزيرة بورما، وقام بحملة ناجحة على مملکتي شامباو وأنام (فيتنام)، بينما فشلت حملته على جزيرة جاوة. وخلاصة القول، فقد فشل قوبلاي في تکييف الاستراتيجيات المغولية الناجحة في غزوات البر بالشکل نفسه في غزوات البحر، فلم تنجح التنقيات القديمة التي استخدمها جده جنکيز خان في حملاته البحرية على کل من اليابان وجاوة، برغم أن قوبلاي سعى بشکل کبير إلى تحويل الصين المغولية إلى قوة عسکرية محيطية تجيد استخدام فنون الأسطول والجيوش البحرية. Abstract The topic of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty's foreign policy towards the Far Eastern countries deals with the policy of the Mongol Yuan countries towards Korea, Japan, and the Southeast Asian islands. To strength his relationship with the Korean royal family, Kublai married one of his daughters to the Korean crown prince to ensure the country's loyalty to his ruling family in China. Accordingly, Korea became a Chinese Mongolcolony. As for the relationship with Japan, it was not as friendly as it was with Korea. Kublai repeatedly attempted to invade Japan, first in (673 AH / 1274 AD) and second in (680 AH / 1281AD). As for the islands of Southeast Asia, Kublai gained supremacy over the island of Burma and he successfully campaigned against Shambau and Anam (Vietnam), while his campaign on the island of Java failed. To sum up, Kublai failed to adapt successful Mongol strategies for land invasions in the same way as for naval invasions. The ancient techniques used by his grandfather, Genghis Khan, in his naval campaigns on both Japan and Java failed, although Kublai greatly sought to transform Mughal China into an ocean military proficiency in the arts of the fleet and naval armies.

Effects of afforestation of agricultural land with grey alder (Alnus incana (L.) Moench) on soil chemical properties, comparing two contrasting soil groups

BackgroundNatural afforestation of former agricultural lands with alder species is common in Europe. Symbiotic nitrogen fixation by actinomycetes associated with alder species has been widely used for improvement of soil properties of abandoned agricultural lands, but relatively little is known of the interactions of these processes with soil type and chemical composition. We conducted a space-for time study with soil sampling under and outside grey alder tree canopies on two different soil groups to explore effects of colonisation of former agricultural lands by alder on soil properties.ResultsThe results were analysed using analysis of variance. During the first 25 years after afforestation of former agricultural lands there was a significant increase in content of Ctot, Ntot, K+, Fe3+, Mn2+ and available P in the topsoil (0–10 cm and 11–20 cm) of Dystric Arenosols soils, which are deficient in organic matter. Such trends were not evident in organic matter rich Endostagnic Umbrisols soils, in which exchangeable K+ concentration decreased and exchangeable Fe3+ and Al3+ concentration increased.ConclusionsThe results show that the effects of grey alder on soil chemical properties depend on initial soil properties. The invasion of agricultural land by grey alder leads to spatial variability of soil chemical properties creating a mosaic pattern.

Crossing extreme habitat boundaries: Jack‐of‐all‐trades facilitates invasion but is eroded by adaptation to a master‐of‐one

AbstractThe invasion of new environments can be a key instigator of adaptive diversification, but the likelihood of such invasions succeeding can depend on the attributes of would‐be invaders. Chief among these seems to be a generalist or ‘jack‐of‐all‐trades’ phenotype.Yet, despite the obvious link between habitat transitions and adaptation, we know surprisingly little about how phenotypes that might initially allow taxa to transition between habitats subsequently evolve or influence post‐invasion differentiation.We tested how a generalist phenotype of a broad diet and behavioural plasticity in marine blenny fish has facilitated the repeated invasion of extreme environments—particularly land—and how the conditions post‐invasion have impacted that generalist phenotype and associated trophic morphology.Our data show that a wide diet and plasticity in being able to shift between environments freely have been instrumental in the progressive invasion of land by amphibious blennies. Once established, however, terrestrial blennies have experienced strong stabilizing selection for a restricted diet, little to no plasticity and a highly specialized morphology. Instead of promoting diversification, the invasion of land appears to offer only a limited niche for survival, constraining descendent blennies to a specific adaptive phenotype.While our study supports the view that generalism facilitates invasion and that habitat transitions instigate adaptation, it also shows a generalist strategy is not optimal for successful establishment and new environments may offer fewer (not more) opportunities for diversification. This has broad implications for how taxa might be expected to respond or adapt to abrupt environmental change more generally.A freeplain language summarycan be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Spatial planning with long visual range benefits escape from visual predators in complex naturalistic environments

It is uncontroversial that land animals have more elaborated cognitive abilities than their aquatic counterparts such as fish. Yet there is no apparent a-priori reason for this. A key cognitive faculty is planning. We show that in visually guided predator-prey interactions, planning provides a significant advantage, but only on land. During animal evolution, the water-to-land transition resulted in a massive increase in visual range. Simulations of behavior identify a specific type of terrestrial habitat, clustered open and closed areas (savanna-like), where the advantage of planning peaks. Our computational experiments demonstrate how this patchy terrestrial structure, in combination with enhanced visual range, can reveal and hide agents as a function of their movement and create a selective benefit for imagining, evaluating, and selecting among possible future scenarios—in short, for planning. The vertebrate invasion of land may have been an important step in their cognitive evolution.

ANALYSIS OF MORPHOLOGY & HOUSING LAYOUT IN CIBADUYUT HANDYCRAFT CENTER IN CONTEXT TOWARD INTEGRATION WITH THE NEW SYSTEM OF TOD IN THE FUTURE

Abstract - The city development is should give positive contribution to social development, on ideal situation. However this situation is not always similar with the expectation as well as theory. Several factors are be as the push factor to the movement, and the movement can be contradictive to negative conditions: (1). The high level land invasion by private sector to community on location. (2). The lack of development as well as training program in location, by the government and others. (3). The condition of high pressure of import handycract from another country including : shoes and other handycraft from leather. The similar things happen in Cibaduyut as housing settlement based on leather industry-activity. An important thing that should be highlighted is this analysis based on the strength and the opportunity of application concept of “system approach to architecture” (Handler : (1970)), which being completed with many supporting theories. Comprehensive analysis of physical condition social as well as regulation, is as the key factor to find the best model as the design solution of redevelopment sustainable settlement as well as sustainable landscape development in research location. Hopefully the model will relevant with the planning of High Speed railway (HSRT) Bandung-Jakarta which will be finished on 2021. Keywords: Housing Layout, Housing Morphology, Transit Oriented Developmen (TOD), System Approach to Architecture, Sustainable Tourism Settlement.

Invasores: Squatters, Informal Cities, and the Co-Optation of the Urban Poor in Latter Twentieth-Century Mexico

Millions of people fled urban and rural poverty in latter twentieth-century Mexico and squatted on marginal urban lands, establishing shantytowns using whatever resources were available to them. Derided as invasores (invaders), squatters faced eviction, surveillance, and repression, but for many, the outcome was regularization—a process that saw the government provide them land titles. Built on ministerial studies, intelligence reports, newspaper coverage, and secondary analyses, this article contends that the Mexican federal government confronted the crises of land invasions and urban informality by distributing patronage and legalizing the land claims of squatters in ways that subordinated them politically and reduced the threats they posed to national stability. Empirical studies from Acapulco and Chihuahua in the 1960s and 70s and an assessment of federal policy demonstrate how land invasions and the rise of informal cities in the latter century compelled authorities to use land tenure regularization as a means to establish patronage networks, demobilize political alternatives, and, ultimately, perpetuate the status quo.

Major Revisions in Arthropod Phylogeny Through Improved Supermatrix, With Support for Two Possible Waves of Land Invasion by Chelicerates.

Deep phylogeny involving arthropod lineages is difficult to recover because the erosion of phylogenetic signals over time leads to unreliable multiple sequence alignment (MSA) and subsequent phylogenetic reconstruction. One way to alleviate the problem is to assemble a large number of gene sequences to compensate for the weakness in each individual gene. Such an approach has led to many robustly supported but contradictory phylogenies. A close examination shows that the supermatrix approach often suffers from two shortcomings. The first is that MSA is rarely checked for reliability and, as will be illustrated, can be poor. The second is that, to alleviate the problem of homoplasy at the third codon position of protein-coding genes due to convergent evolution of nucleotide frequencies, phylogeneticists may remove or degenerate the third codon position but may do it improperly and introduce new biases. We performed extensive reanalysis of one of such “big data” sets to highlight these two problems, and demonstrated the power and benefits of correcting or alleviating these problems. Our results support a new group with Xiphosura and Arachnopulmonata (Tetrapulmonata + Scorpiones) as sister taxa. This favors a new hypothesis in which the ancestor of Xiphosura and the extinct Eurypterida (sea scorpions, of which many later forms lived in brackish or freshwater) returned to the sea after the initial chelicerate invasion of land. Our phylogeny is supported even with the original data but processed with a new “principled” codon degeneration. We also show that removing the 1673 codon sites with both AGN and UCN codons (encoding serine) in our alignment can partially reconcile discrepancies between nucleotide-based and AA-based tree, partly because two sequences, one with AGN and the other with UCN, would be identical at the amino acid level but quite different at the nucleotide level.

Resistance Narratives: A study of H. M. Naqvi’s Home Boy

The present paper analyzes H. M. Naqvi’s Home Boy as counter-narrative to Orientalism in Western discourse that writes back to the American Empire apropos September 11 and terrorism. Naqvi tries to analyze, describe, problematize and destabilize Orientalist discourse of “othering” a and “stereotyping” The narrative protests against American imperialism—its belligerent foreign policy, its suppression and exploitation of third world countries, interference in other countries, and occupation and invasion of foreign lands. The narrative starts as a typical immigrant narrative in which the protagonist comes to the United States in pursuit of the American dream of prosperity, happiness and freedoms. Initially, the protagonist has assimilative and accommodative tendencies in the hopes of partaking in the economic and social privileges bestowed by a prestigious American education and lucrative employment in big financial institutions in the metropolis. However, the events of September 11 exacerbate an already precarious atmosphere of discrimination that exists in the novel in which their protagonist is treated as an outsider and enemy.

Review Essay: On Settler Colonialism

As the late Patrick Wolfe phrased it, “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event.” Settler colonialism as a “structure not an event” captures the idea that settler colonial invasion of Indigenous lands should not be contained as a phenomenon of the past, but rather is continually reproduced throughout the history and present of settler societies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. To say this is also to raise the question of how to trace and analyze the development, legitimization, and maintenance of the colonial structures in these societies: those built on the dispossession and occupation of stolen lands. To this end, Rita Dhamoon's definition of settler colonialism helps in thinking of it as “not only a structure but also a process, an activity for assigning political meanings, and organizing material structures driven by forces of power.” Dhamoon points us toward attending rigorously to this process in ideological, institutional, structural, and historical terms.

Improving Land Tenure Administration Effectiveness in a Post-Conflict Peri-Urban Mombasa Settlement

This article examines the effectiveness of official land administration systems in protecting land tenure in a rapidly changing post-conflict peri-urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It explores the difficulty involved in administering land tenure in a post-conflict peri-urban settlement in SSA after conflict and land invasion and shows that conventional official land administrations systems are ill-suited to such situations. The illustrative context for this case study is Waitiki Farm, a post-conflict peri-urban settlement in Mombasa Kenya, which was invaded in 1997 during the tribal clashes that occurred in Likoni in the lead up to the 1997 General Elections. The case study is based on interviews with key informants, households, and focus group discussions. The study findings indicate the expected social, economic, and political behaviour in a post-conflict peri-urban area when the government is unwilling or unable to enforce court orders to remove land invaders. It also shows the importance of local settlement level political coalitions in land administration after conflict in peri-urban areas. It concludes that in addition to understanding the manifestation of social change in local politics, there is need for the official land administration systems to engage with these situations with a view to improving administration for continual improvement.

Land invasions and land reform in Basilicata, Italy: an evaluation of place-based policies

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the political economy that characterized the design and implementation of a particular place-based policy aimed at addressing wealth inequality, that is, land reform. It focuses on Basilicata in the Italian south, where massive land invasions took place between December 1949 and March 1950 in reaction to long-lasting and extreme inequality. The invading peasants were solicited and even coordinated by local Communist Party leaders. Empirical analysis shows that land invasions were driven not only by the concentration of land ownership but also by the strength of the Communist Party. Furthermore, towns that had experienced land invasions were more likely to be affected by the agrarian reform, and that this policy was more intense in those towns. The results are interpreted as evidence that land ownership was the object of a clear consolidation strategy by the Communist Party and of issue ownership competition with the subsequent implementation of land reform.

“A cry in the vast dark”: Ian Holding’s What Happened to Us and the confession of shame

Like much white Zimbabwean writing in the aftermath of the land invasions of 2000, Ian Holding’s What Happened to Us concerns itself with the issue of white identity, but does so through its invocation of Zimbabwe’s failed policy of racial reconciliation. In this article, I examine this novel’s meditation on reconciliation and the possibility of attaining a postcolonial condition that breaks with colonial modes of identity predicated on negating forms of racial difference. I trace, in particular, Holding’s use of the confessional mode of writing in his engagement with the idea of reconciliation. Whereas this mode ordinarily focuses on individual guilt, I show that, in Holding’s novel, it expresses the collective shame of whites for their separatism, which is presented as a failure of imagination. Throughout, my focus is Holding’s recalibration of the confessional mode of writing to accommodate a community perspective, and the implications of this reconceptualization for confession’s telos, which is the forgiveness of the individual confessant and, with it, his or her reintegration into community. I argue that the confession of shame, if it is to end with such reintegration or reconciliation, effectively requires the confessant to imagine his or her own death.

Land Invasion by the Mudskipper, Periophthalmodon septemradiatus, in Fresh and Saline Waters of the Mekong River

There has been a long-standing controversy about whether vertebrates emerged in the Paleozoic from marine or freshwater environments. Several hypotheses have proposed coastal, estuarine and riparian areas as sites of the transition. Here, we report the ecology of an amphibious fish Periophthalmodon septemradiatus, which we presume is in the process of niche expansion into terrestrial habitats from estuarine to freshwater environments along the Mekong River, Vietnam. Adult fish are highly terrestrial and have not been observed to venture into water during our survey. Courtship behaviour was observed, and fertilised eggs were recovered from burrows in both brackish and freshwater environments. The smallest fish collected at 12, 96, and 148 km from the river mouth were juveniles shortly after starting an amphibious life. These findings suggest reproduction in both brackish and freshwater environments. In contrast, otolith Sr:Ca ratio indicates larval hatching only in brackish water. Analysis of a 940-base pair (bp) segment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit II and a 934-bp segment of the mitochondrial D-loop demonstrated no genetic segregation between populations. The fish may provide a unique opportunity to study how ambient salinity affects the biology and ecology of a living vertebrate during transition from water to land.

Tenure rights recognition in South African land reform

Land reform has proceeded slowly in South Africa since the end of apartheid. The state is not meeting targets. For many black citizens who feel let down by sustained poverty, inequality and unemployment in the country, the slow pace of land reform is a symbolic focus of frustrations. In public discussions, consequent impatience drives anger, threats and fear. The risk that this critical state of affairs may lead to expropriation of land by the state or spur on land invasions, deters investment and slows economic growth, aggravating poverty, inequality and unemployment. At the centre of this circle of problems, tenure insecurity connects the parts and turns the wheel, dragging back land reform and development. Of the three main objectives of land reform, the first two, restitution and redistribution, depend on the third, namely security of tenure rights. South African land reform has been held back by weak social tenure rights, which land reform has reproduced. South African land administration is dominated by a Western theory of tenure rights, represented by the registered freehold title deed, by which a contract links a specific plot to a legal person. Such tenure rights are effectively secure. But the nested, layered, bundled, overlapping, negotiated social tenure arrangements of the majority of African citizens do not fit this individualistic model of title deeds. Neglected by the official system, social tenure arrangements remain relatively insecure. The imbalance in official recognition of land rights sustains colonial patterns of segregation and inequality. I outline an account of tenure rights, which accommodates a wider array of tenure arrangements, to align Western title deeds with African social tenures. This is needed in land reform if both title deeds and social tenures are to be afforded equal levels of security in land administration and reform. I show how this account improves on an influential alternative model of social tenures in the literature.

Battle of the giants: Plants versus animals in idealised landscapes of ‘deep time’

Societal Impact StatementUnderstanding our place in the universe is important. If we are to make sense of our place, we have to examine this not only within the context of ‘deep time’, the geological history of our planet, but also within the role of other key organisms, specifically plants. Scientists present this history to the public, but we must be aware of the biases that can often be part of these representations, no matter how well intentioned or seemingly objective. Too often images are focused on animals, especially higher animals, and ignore other vital parts of our ecosystems. This has consequences for understanding Earth's history, and also how we treat organisms today. Summary ‘Plant blindness’ is a feature of our modern world, and of popular science narratives of the evolution of life. Plants are often overlooked and certainly poorly represented in the visual representations of past life on Earth (deep time). They tend to form the backdrop to the teeming activity of evolving animal life and are only mentioned (with appropriate images) at a few significant waypoints: the movement of life to land, the great coal‐forming forests of the Carboniferous period and the evolution of the flowering plants. While plant life is essential for animal life to thrive on land, chapter titles such as ‘The invasion of land’ and discussion thereof are still generally reserved for animals, and even then, the vertebrates. This paper explores the genesis of this approach to representing deep time as essentially a parade of animal life and shows that during the early period of popular scientific representation, plants were given their due place in some key publications by, for example, Franz Unger and Josef Kuwasseg in the 19th century and Zdenek Burian in the 20th century. Part of the problem appears to be the seemingly static nature of plants and the apparent demand for activity (often predation) that has its origins in science as spectacle, beginning with Henry de la Beche.