The princeton field guide to mesozoic plants / Принстонский полевой справочник по мезозойским растениям

Aliens Among Us is a long-standing trope of science fiction. Strange creatures from another world invade, take over the planet, and bend earthlings to their will. In the most frightening versions of this story, the hapless humans are unaware of or perhaps beguiled by their alien overlords. But that is science fiction. In science fact, we have plants. They did not come from another world. Instead, they evolved from freshwater green algae alongside our fishy ancestors and pioneered, then transformed, life on land. In fact, land plants sculpted the atmosphere and terrestrial environment to make it habitable for animals like us. Yet plants are so alien that some people question whether they are life-forms at all. To the casual observer, plants may seem inanimate. They move too slowly for us to perceive, yet shift your houseplant away from the window and it will turn back toward the light like the monstrous statue that moves only when you look away. Plants “see” without eyes, “smell” without noses, “breathe” without lungs, move fluid around their bodies without hearts, and communicate with each other and with their animal partners in the complex chemical language of scent. Plants are simultaneously wondrously alien and so intimately connected to us that we literally could not live without them. They freshen the air that we breathe, help the rain to fall, create and stabilize the soil, and make food enough for everyone from sunlight, air, and water. Yet when the fantastic story of Earth’s history is told, plants—if they appear at all—are usually the backdrop to the animal action. This work brings the little (and big) green aliens to center stage and tells the remarkable story of how they created, then transformed, the Mesozoic Earth and fashioned the world we inhabit today. <...>