(rī'nēŏf'ətə) , division of plants known only from fossils, of which the genus Rhynia was perhaps the most important. These plants date from the Silurian and Devonian age. Relatively simple in structure, they resemble the Psilotophyta in many features, such as the lack of clearly developed roots. Like modern higher plants the Rhyniophyta had the specialized conducting tissues xylem and phloem. The Rhyniophyta are the most primitive group of vascular plants so far known and appear to be ancestral to most of the major divisions of vascular plants.

Rhyniophyta is a name sometimes used for the group of plants found in the Rhynie chert, Lagerstätte (rich fossil beds) in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The Rhyniophyta or Rhynie flora are unusual for their excellent preservation of very early fossils of primitive vascular plants, in addition to plants with uncertain vascular traces, and non-vascular plants. The fossils contain sufficient cellular detail to to tell which plants are the sporophyte generation due to the presence of sporangia. In addition, because the plants were buried in-situ, rather than transported before burial, important distinguishing features, such as reproductive structures, are found attached to their parent plants. The site appears to include sporophytes and gametophytes of the same species and other organisms, such as arthropods, that lived in the Rhynie ecosystem. All of this gives an insight into the sort of ecosystems early plants evolved in.

One of the most important radiations for land plants occurred in the early Devonian, making this rich fossil discovery of major importance to paleobotany.

External links

• http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/plants/anthocerotophyta.html

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