flora

• In the Devonian period forests began to appear as plants grew trunks, leaves, roots and seeds for the first time
• Plants appeared in the oceans (Precambrian)

  630 million years ago
• Plants are often washed into lakes or the sea where preservation chances are better
• Plants from boreal, temperate or tropical biomes

  Can be determined
• Pollen

  Good paleoenvironmental indicators
• Pollen


  Can also be used to identify a species of plant
• Leaves, bark and stems


  Preserved and can be used to identify specific species of plants
• Pollen is very abundant and widespread but it is so small that a high powered microscope is needed to see it
• Terrestrial environments are poor location for fossilisation
• Some ancient millipedes began to consume the early plants in the Silurian era
• Pollen


  Small grains that are resistant, which is better for preservation
• Primitive plants colonised the land in the Ordovician period, they were very small and had no root structure
• Flora


  Includes ferns, leaves, roots and trunks; they are body fossils
• Leaves, bark and stems

  Good paleoenvironmental indicators
• 300 million years ago tropical rainforests began to grow and were turned into coal