Showcases research of broad botanical and paleontological interest from the world's experts on Mesozoic plant life. This title covers various aspects of plant group - ranging from horsetails to ginkgophytes, from cycads to conifers - and relates them to key innovations in structure, phylogenetic relationships, Mesozoic vegetation.

The Mesozoic was a curious but wondrous time, replete with giant dinosaurs, flying reptiles, and crown-tufted plants. It was an era that encompassed a vast amount of time, over 185 million years, making the survival of the Mesozoic fauna and flora an incredible success story.

Plants in Mesozoic Time: Morphological Innovations, Phylogeny, Ecosystems takes an in-depth look at the curious Mesozoic flora. Gathering the latest research by the world's top paleobotanists of the Mesozoic, the volume is divided into three parts: Part 1 focuses on key innovations that show up in Mesozoic plants, Part 2 discusses the phylogeny of Mesozoic plants, and Part 3 explores the topic of ecosystems and Mesozoic plants.

While the volume abounds in information on gymnosperms such as ginkgophytes, conifers, cycads, and bennettitaleans, it also presents evidence on other kinds of plants, such as the oldest Equisetum-like horsetails as well as on the oldest angiosperm lianas. Fossil plants can no longer hide from the intense scrutiny of modern approaches, for analytical tools such as cladistics are being used to shed light on the contested issue of bennettitalean and angiosperm relationships. Even studies on evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") have not remained the sole domain of those working on living organisms, because fossils can, surprisingly, reveal quite a bit about how development and evolution interact. Dinosaurs make a splashy appearance in this book, too, in a chapter that focuses its attention at the hard evidence for herbivory and food preferences in dinosaurs.

The contributors to this book are Sergio Archangelsky, Analía Artabe, Sidney R. Ash, Nina L. Baghai-Riding, Brooks B. Britt, Marcus Clauss, William L. Crepet, N. Rubén Cúneo, Georgina M. Del Fueyo, Charles P. Daghlian, David L. Dilcher, Ignacio Escapa, Silvia Gnaedinger, Carole T. Gee, Carol L. Hotton, Jürgen Hummel, Nancy Kerk, Michael Krings, Jeffrey M. Osborn, Gar W. Rothwell, P. Martin Sander, Andrew B. Schwendemann, Dennis W. Stevenson, Ruth A. Stockey, Ian Sussex, David Winship Taylor, Edith L. Taylor, Mackenzie L. Taylor, Thomas N. Taylor, William D. Tidwell, and Liliana Villar de Seoane.

Plants in Mesozoic Time showcases the latest research of broad botanical and paleontological interest from the world's experts on Mesozoic plant life. Each chapter covers a special aspect of a particular plant group—ranging from horsetails to ginkgophytes, from cycads to conifers—and relates it to key innovations in structure, phylogenetic relationships, the Mesozoic flora, or to animals such as plant-eating dinosaurs. The book's geographic scope ranges from Antarctica and Argentina to the western interior of North America, with studies on the reconstruction of the Late Jurassic vegetation of the Morrison Formation and on fossil angiosperm lianas from Late Cretaceous deposits in Utah and New Mexico. The volume also includes cutting-edge studies on the evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") of Mesozoic forests, the phylogenetic analysis of the still enigmatic bennettitaleans, and the genetic developmental controls of the oldest flowers in the fossil record.