'World's oldest plants'

472 million-year-old fossils are unearthed in Argentina

Fossils of the oldest plants ever to colonise land have been discovered in Argentina, scientists claim.

The amazing find indicates that plants had already colonised the earth 472million years ago - a full ten million years earlier than first thought.

Experts have confirmed that the fossilised plants are liverworts, a simple species which has no roots or stems. They have suggested that the discovery indicates they are likely to be the ancestors of all land plants.

Fossils found: Modern liverworts are one of the oldest known species of plant, thought to have evolved from algae. Experts have confirmed that the fossilised plants discovered are 472million-year-old liverworts

The discovery was made by a team of researchers at the Department of Palaeontology at the Argentine Institute of Snow, Ice and Environmental Research in Mendoza, Argentina.

Chief researcher Claudia Rubinstein and her team found five fossilised species in sediment samples collected from the Sierras Subandinas in the Central Andean Basin of northwest Argentina. 

'Spores of liverwort are very simple and called cryptospores,' Dr Rubeinstein told the BBC. 'The cryptospores that we describe are the earliest to date.'

Sierras Subandinas: The samples were found in north-west Argentina

He added that the plants had already begun to diversify, indicating they must have colonised land earlier than liverwort cryptospores which had been previously found in other parts of the world.

Prior to this discovery, the oldest known plants had been liverwort cryptospores found in Saudi Arabia and the Czech Republic which were thought to date back around 462 million years.

Dr Rubenstein said the discovery was totally unexpected.

'The surprise was so great that I asked my colleague Philippe Steemans to process the same sediment sample,' she said.

'He found exactly the same cryptospore assemblages, which demonstrated that the presence of the cryptospores in my samples was not due to a contamination.'

 

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