Plants crawled onto land earlier than we give them credit, genetic evidence suggests

Plant biologists agree that it all began with green algae. At some point in our planet's history, the common ancestor of trees, ferns, and flowers developed an alternating life cycle—presumably allowing their offspring to float inland and conquer Earth. But on December 16 in Trends in Plant Science, Danish scientists argue that some green algae had been hanging out on land hundreds of millions of years before this adaptation and that land plants actually evolved from terrestrial, not aquatic, algae.

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