Land plants are diverse and abundant components of the Devonian fossil record, but they are barely represented in Silurian rocks. As a result, the emergence of plants onto dry land is poorly understood. Spores and fragmentary macrofossils have been recovered from Silurian rocks in the Welsh Borderlands and the northern Appalachians, but critical comparisons between these unique paleofloras have not yet been attempted. Dr. Paul Strother proposes an intensive collecting effort in Pennsylvania, followed by comparative analysis with Welsh material. Dr. Strother will use infrared imaging to isolate and analyze the cuticular plant remains that have been preserved in shales. The proposed research has the potential to contribute important new fossils to our meager understanding of early land plants. Dr. Strother's explorations and analysis will clarify the anatomy and ecology of these first land plants, and will help to illuminate their evolutionary relationships to younger fossil groups and to extant plants. His results will find a wide audience among botanists, paleoecologists, and evolutionary biologists in general.
