ArticleNature plants2026
Reconstructing spore evolution recalibrates the timescale of land plant diversification.
Article in Nature plants, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The origin and evolution of land plants precipitated fundamental changes to the Earth system and enabled the diversification of life on land. Their early evolution is documented by a rich fossil record of sporopollenin-walled spores that is difficult to interpret because the evolution of plant spore characteristics is unresolved. We employ a suite of ancestral state estimation methods to elucidate the pattern of spore character evolution among land plants. We find that the ancestral embryophyte underwent monoplastidic meiosis and produced unenveloped spores with a three-layered sporoderm. We infer that trilete spores (that developed in tetrahedral tetrads), traditionally considered a feature of vascular plants, were produced by the crown-embryophyte. We recalibrate the molecular timescale of early land plant evolution on the basis of a reinterpretation of the fossil record in this light. We find that crown-embryophytes originated in the Late Ordovician (457-450 Ma) and that both crown-tracheophytes (432-428 Ma) and crown-bryophytes (445-429 Ma) diverged in the early Silurian.
Identifiers
42918820What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.