FIFTY YEARS OF PALEOBOTANY, I906-I956 599 



least as dramatic as the report of the "discovery" of the living dawn red- 

 wood. If we designated the last fifty years of paleobotany as the period of 

 Metasequoia, such simplification would have great popular appeal but would 

 misrepresent the accomplishments of all other paleobotanists. As Andrews 

 pointed out, the same sequence of events that led to the discovery of Meta- 

 sequoia could have happened in regard to a number of other genera. 



Once living plants of Metasequoia had been found, paleobotanists did not 

 have to attempt a restoration of it as is customarily done with other fossil 

 plants. Jongmans and Krausel have traced the evolution of our concepts of 

 fossil plants from their earliest restorations to our present-day museum ex- 

 hibits. These restorations reilect indeed the knowledge of a particular genera- 

 tion of paleobotanists in regard to the periods or plants shown. In this respect 

 restorations and exhibits play an important role in clarifying our concepts and 

 indicating levels of our changing knowledge. The great popular appeal of these 

 visual aids testifies to their immense educational value. 



Despite the vast progress made in paleobotany during the last fifty years, 

 we are far from having solved all problems confronting us. As yet we know 

 all too little of the origin of life, the earliest living beings, and only the general 

 sequence of major groups throughout the geological time scale. The geological 

 column is still essentially zoological despite Gothan's efforts to establish 

 paleobotanically more suitable divisions, namely, the paleophytic, mesophytic, 

 and cenophytic eras. These and many minor problems will eventually be 

 resolved in a manner similar to that by which the seed ferns were worked 

 out. And in regard to the origin of angiosperms, that ''abominable mystery," 

 as Darwin called it, we now have at least one more suggestion of a possible 

 ancestral group, one never before considered in this context. Bisexual fructifi- 

 cations found attached to several species of the famous leaf genus Glossopteris, 

 the dominant member of the Gondwana flora of the Southern Hemisphere 

 generally referred to the seed ferns, have recently been described as two new 

 genera from South African material. In Mrs. Plumstead's considered opinion 

 (1956), these plants "may well be Permian forerunners of Angiosperms." 

 Whether these fossils represent the actual forerunners of angiosperms or not, 

 "the accumulating mass of evidence suggests that we may soon have to reverse 

 Darwin's wonderment and enquire how it was that the angiosperms took so 

 long to spread and multiply'' (Edwards, 1955), 



LITERATURE CITED 



Andrews, H. N., Jr. 1947. Ancient plants and the world they lived in. Comstock. 



Ithaca, N.Y. 

 . 1948. Metaseqtwia and the living fossils. Missouri Bot. Gard. Bull. 36:79- 



85. 



. 1948. Some evolutionary trends in the pteridosperms. Bot. Gaz. 110:13-31. 



. 1951. American coal-ball floras. Bot. Rev. 17:430-469. 



