The Dawn Angiosperms and Plant Evolution

This would be the third edition of my monograph on fossil angiosperms. The book focuses on reproductive organs (flowers) of angiosperms. Since fossils are only reliable data source on the history of plants, and flowers are crucial organs used in angiosperm taxonomy, deciphering fossil flowers is undisputedly important in botany. In the previous two editions, enough of pre-Cretaceous angiosperms have been documented, and a theory, the Unifying Theory, has been advanced and proved. Several significant progresses have been made in the past eight years, this makes a newer edition badly needed for students studying botany and plant evolution. Most importantly, new fossil angiosperms discovered in the Permian, which is over 250 million years ago, and recent molecular estimates as well as fossil insect records converge to an origin of angiosperms in a pre-Cretaceous age. These progresses go far beyond the expectation of all botanical textbooks, prompting a new wave of theory innovations in the coming years. Third edition of THE DAWN ANGIOSPERMS will place a foundation for and trigger such innovations. Needless to say, publishing such a monograph will place Springer once again in the center of these science innovations. Inhaltsverzeichnis Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Suggested angiosperm ancestors.- Chapter 3. Angiosperms: characters and criteria.- Chapter 4. Background for the plant fossils.- Chapter 5. Flowers from the Early Cretaceous.- Chapter 6. Pre-Cretaceous Angiosperms.- Chapter 7. Putative plants transient between gymnosperms and angiosperms.- Chapter 8. The Making of flowers and Plant Evolution.- Chapter 9. General conclusions.- Chapter 10. Appendices. Autorenportrait Xin Wang, 1990 bachelor at Peking University, 1993 master at the Institute of Botany, CAS, 2004 doctor at University of Florida. Researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, CAS since 2004. With over hundred peer-reviewed publications, Xin Wang and his colleagues have confirmed the earliest occurrences of angiosperms in the Early Permian (over hundred million years before widely assumed), unified the evolution of reproductive organs in land plants, raised a ubiquitous evolutionary pattern ODC (offspring development conditioning). Xin Wang pioneered research on plant cytoplasm research. In addition, Xin Wang also works on prime numbers and has brought the chaotic primer numbers in order.