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Nigersaurus ate plants – learn
what could have been on
an herbivore’s Mesozoic menu.
Illustrations by Caroline Stromberg
Photographs © Botanics
Only by bringing together plants from around the globe and a variety of modern environments can a dinosaur-age scene be recreated. Some of the plants, like ginkgos, look virtually the same as their extinct ancestors; some, like the conifer Araucaria, were the dominant trees of the forests 110 million years ago. Plant groups alive at the time of the dinosaurs include mosses, horsetails, ferns, tree ferns, cycads, ginkgos, conifers, palms, blooming water lilies and magnolias.
EARLY PLANTS LIVED IN WET ENVIRONMENTS
AND REPRODUCED USING SPORES:
Early land plants inhabited a hot, humid environment. 300 million years ago, many land areas were covered in wet forests of giant clubmoss, horsetails and ferns. These seedless plants reproduce with spores, which require humid environments to survive.
Clubmoss and Horsetails
Horsetails (Equisetum) have a central, hollow stem with whorls of leaves or thin branches. They hold their spores in a cigar-shaped “cone” at the top of the plant. Horsetails date back to ~370 million years ago. During the beginning of the dinosaur era they grew to be nearly 30 feet tall (10m.)
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