Cooksonia
| Cooksonia Temporal range: | |
|---|---|
| A cartoon of Cooksonia, reconstructed with non-photosynthetic axes, dependent on its gametophyte, as per Boyce (2008) | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Stem group: | †Rhyniophytes |
| Form taxon: | †Cooksonioidea |
| Genus: | †Cooksonia Lang 1937 emend. Gonez & Gerrienne 2010 non Druce 1905 |
| Type species | |
| Cooksonia pertoni Lang 1937 | |
| Species | |
| |
Cooksonia is an extinct group of primitive land plants, treated as a genus, although probably not monophyletic. The earliest Cooksonia date from the middle of the Silurian (the Wenlock epoch); the group continued to be an important component of the flora until the end of the Early Devonian, a total time span of 433 to 393 million years ago. While Cooksonia fossils are distributed globally, most type specimens come from Britain, where they were first discovered in 1937. Cooksonia includes the oldest known plant to have a stem with vascular tissue and is thus a transitional form between the primitive non-vascular bryophytes and the vascular plants.
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