CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



curious flowers and seeds quite unlike those of modern 

 plants. Their many varieties are collectively known as 

 Cordaites, and a restoration of one is shown in Fig. 6. Near 

 the end of the Palaeozoic era we find the coal plants dwin- 

 dling in number, as a consequence of the changing conditions 



of Permian time, and new types making their 

 appearance, such as cycads and coniferous 

 trees, ancestral to Mesozoic forms. The late 

 Palaeozoic rocks of Australia, India, South 

 Africa, and South America give evidence of 

 widespread glacial ice. The rigors of this 

 time in these regions expelled many of the 

 members of the earlier cosmopolitan flora and 

 introduced a number of new types, known 

 collectively as the Glossopteris flora. (Fig. 7.) 

 The earlier part of the Mesozoic era was a 

 time of widespread seas; the land deposits 

 then laid down contain few fossil plants. The 

 oldest Mesozoic rocks containing a representa- 

 tive flora are those laid down near the end of 

 the Triassic period. In the long time that had 

 ||]V*^-^ elapsed since the Permian epoch many changes 

 had taken place. A few surviving stragglers 

 of the old order lingered on, but many of these 



older Mesozoic plants 



K 



W 



Fig. 4. — Restora- 

 tion of Hye??ia, a mid- 

 dle Devonian plant, 

 which combines fea- 

 tures of the later club- 

 moss and horsetail 

 lines of evolution and 

 suggests certain fea- 

 tures of the fern line. 

 (After Krausel and 

 Weyland.) 



[164] 



were the diversified de- 

 scendants of the conifers, 

 cycads, and ginkgos, 

 though they included nu- 

 merous ancestral repre- 

 sentatives of most of the 

 modern families of ferns. 

 The Mesozoic has been 



