Three truths
- Timed
- Began about 470 million years ago · the last 11% of life's story
- Named
- ≈180,000 named living species · 11% of all named
- Weighed
- ≈450 Gt C · 82% of all life's carbon
Eukaryotes · plants and algae · clade
Land plants
Embryophyta
Living · roughly 180,000 described species
Plants that live on land, from mosses to trees. They descend from green algae and colonised land roughly 470 million years ago.
Plants moved onto land about 470 million years ago.
Key characteristics
- Embryos protected by the parent plant
- Waxy coating against drying out
- Alternate between two generations in their life cycle
- Habitat
- Land on every continent
- Branched off
- About 900 million years ago (approximate)
- Parent lineage
- Streptophytes
Child lineages
Classification
Sources
- Embryophyte (Wikipedia) · Wikipedia
- TimeTree: the timescale of life · TimeTree
- Open Tree of Life · Open Tree of Life
- Tree of Life Web Project · Tree of Life Web Project