BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW
Written to Fulfil One of Extensive Reading Subject’s Task









Created by
Resti Tantiawanti
082122063
6B




ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES AND TEACHERS’ TRAINING
SILIWANGI UNIVERSITY
2011
BOOK REVIEW
1.What is the title of your book?
• AN INTRODUCTION TO PALEOBOTANY
2.What genre is it?
• Agriculture
3.What is a book about?
• The book is about paleobotany.Paleobotany is the study of the geologic past.It is a part of the more comprehensive science of paleontology.
4.How do you reccomend this book?
• I like this book,because in this book is explained about plants.
1.How did you feel when you finished the book?
• I feel confused because in this book there are words that difficult to be understood.
2.What was the best (the worst) think about the book?
• In this book there are pictures to explain the theory and to make the theory easy to be understood.
3.How long did it take you read the book?
• One week
1.Have you ever experience something similar to what happens in the story?
• Yes,I have.When I was in junior high school and senior high school I studied about plants in Biology subject.
2.What did you learn from the reading?
• After reading this book I can know about Paleobotany and Paleontology.


RESUME

AN INTRODUCTION TO PALEOBOTANY

Paleobotany is the study of the plant life of the geological past.It is a part of the more comprehensive science of paleontology.Just as paleontology is outlined by the overlap of the realms of biology and geology,paleobotany rests upon botanical and geological foundations.Paleobotany can be approached from the viewpoint of botany,whern emphasis is placed upon the plant,or from the gelogical angle in which the rock containingthe fossils is the primary concern.The geological approach to the subject of Paleobotany is mainly from the standpoint of the correlation of rock formations.
The fact derived from a study of fossil pants are of paramount importance for the bearing they have had on the broader subjects of phylogeny and evolution.The reason for classifying is to facilitate the arrangement of the different kinds into an orderly sequnce so that their relationships to one nother can be better understood.The older system were based entirely upon living plants and whatever information was available concerning fossil species was utilized little or not at all.
When speaking of fossils,one ordinarily refers to the remain of organism tht lived long ago.Upon death the body immediately starts to disintegrate.If unimpeded,disintegration will go on until the whole body is broken up into simple chemical compounds,which leach away leaving no evidence of its former existence,but under certain circumstances the work of the agents of destruction becomes halted and parts of the body may remain in visible form.Fossils are lifeless and are incapable of responding to those stimuli which influence normal living creatures.They are relics of the past and no longer participate directly in the affairs of the contemporary world.In a given instance a fossil may be a bone of some animal belonging to an extinct race that has lain buried for centuries in the accumulated debris within a cave,or it may be a shell dislodged by the waves from its resting place in the hard rocks along the shore . Or it may be the imprint of a leaf on a slab of fine- grained sandstone,or a fragment of charred wood in a lump of coal.
When a fossil can be defined only in an arbitrary way,there are certain limitation that must be imposed in addition to those mentioned.Obviously , the body of an organism does not become a fossil the moment life departs (although the changes that take place at death are greater thanthose that come about later) and it may not necessarily become one after the lapse of athousand or more years.
Plant fossils are usually preserved in the rocks composed of seiments deposited in water.Rocks of this category are the sedimentary orstratified rocks mentioned in the preceding chapter.They are distinct from igneous rocks which formwhen lava cools and from metamorphic rocks,in which the original structure of the cmponents has been altered by heat or pressure.Fossils are formed from those organisms or fragments of organism which became entombed in the accumulating sediments before they had a chance to disintegrate completely.It is very seldom that a plants is preserved all in one piece with its several parts attached and all tissues intact.More or less dismembrement invariably take place . Leaves,seeds,and fruits become detached from the twigs on which they grew and the stems break loose from the roots.The softer tissues decay.
The study of plant fossils therefore mainly one of unconnected parts,some of which are usually not fully preserved.Often the parts of many different kinds of plants are mixed together indiscriminately , and te main problem confronting the investigator is the proper sorting and classification of these.
Organic remains in the rocks furnish conclusive evidence that plants belonging to the division Thallophyta were in existence ages before the initial appearance of vascular plants.In fact,approximately threefourths of known geologic time had elapsedbefore the latter group came into existence.
One of the decisive evets in the evolutionary history of the plant kingdom was the appearance of the vascular system.The time and place of the origin of vascular plants,and the manner in which they developed,are some of the basic problems of evolutionary science upon which paleontological investigations have thrown no direct light.Theorist have speculatedat great length upon these matters but perforce without the support of much evidence from the fossils record,which does not begin until land plants began to be permanently preserved.A theory that has found wide acceptance and is not contradicted by any facts revealed by the fossils record is that the vascular system developed among certain highly plastic marine thallophytes which grew along the shores probably at about the upper limits of the tide levels.
The lycopods ( Lycosida ) are spore-bearing,vascular plants represented in the recent flora by the four genera Lycopodium,Sellaginella,Phylloglosum and Isoetes.All of these except the monotypic Phylloglossum are knownin the fossil state.Selaginella is the largest genus with almost 600 species,and it,along with Lycopodium,is represented in the rocks by a series of fossils forms extending as far back as the Carboniferous.The somewhat enigmatic genus Isotoes,placed by some authors in the eusporangiate ferns,has been reported from the Cretaceous and Tertiary,and may be related to the early Mesozoic Pleuromeia.All living lycopods are small plants but some of the extinct members were large trees.
The geological history of the scouring rushes and their relatives is a close parallel to that of the lycopods.Their earliest representatives appeared during the Devonian,the group became a conspicuous element of the flora of the Carboniferous,and their subsequent decline has reduced them to a mere vestige of their former status.The decline,in fact,has been evenmore severe than that endured by the lycopods,as is shown by the the presence in the Recent flora of but 1 genus with some 25 species.
The prevalance of fernlike foliage in the Carboniferous rocks many years ago won for that period the name “ Age of Ferns “ and notions that the Carboniferous flora was predominantly filicinean persisted until the beginning of the present century.However we have no infallible methods of separating fern and seed-fern foliage unless fructiications are present or diagnostic anatomical structures are preserved.
The ferns have a long history that has been traced to the middle of the Devonian period.The oldest ferns are only partly distinct from their psilophytic forebeaers,but in the late Devonian we find them standing out againts the landscape as promonent elements of the flora.Early paleobotanical writers believed that ferns outnumbered other plants during the late Paleozoic,a notion which has not completely disapeared even at the present time.
The pteridosperms,or seed – ferns,may be tersely defined as plants with fernlike foliage,which bore seed.Some of them were trees,but others were smaller plants of reclining or sprawling habit.The story of discovery of the pteridosperms includes a series of events dating back to 1877.In that year Grand Eury mentioned the structural similarity between the petioles of Alethopteris,Neuropteris and Odontoptoris,and certain other petioles which he at the time called Aulocopteris but later identified as Myeloxylon.
The term “ Cycadophyte “ as employed here embodies the Cycadales,or true cycadsboth living and extinct and the Cycadeoidales,a group of cycadlike plants that is entirely extinct.There are some fundamental differences between these groups.In the Cycadeoidales the fructifications are flowerlike organs with a whorl of staments surrounding a central ovuliferous receptacle.The earliest cycadophytes probably arose from pteridospermous ancestors during the late Paleozoic.
The conifers are woody , naked- seeded plants,which often grow to a large size . In vegetative featuressuch as habit,the entire leaves , and the extensive development of secondary wood , many of them show a decided resemblance to the Cordaitales,although differences may be noted in the structure of the reproductive organs , the manner in which the seed are borne,and in the somewhat lesser amounts of primary wood.The geological history of the conifers begins with the Upper Carboniferous epoch,and te order probably reached its developmental climax in the late Jurassic r early Creaceous.During the late Mesozoic it began to decline,probably as a result of more successful competition on the part of the angiosperms whose phenomenal rise to dominancetook place rather abruptly during the early and Middle Cretaceous.
The relatively small amount of space alloted to the fossils angiosperms in this book may sem disproportionate to the position occupied by the flowerin pants in the world today.Therefore it seems advisable to give an explanation for such brevity.In the first place any account of the flowering plants in which they are treated as fully as other groups would greatly enlarge the volume.Secondly the nature of the subject mater itself is not such that it integrates well with the manner of presentation of the other groups.
Regardless of the voluminous is too short to enable us to approach it with the same objectivity with which we view the lower group such as the lycopods,the ferns or the cycadophytes.The floweringplants are probably still in the initial stages of their expansion,hence developmental trends are not clearlyexpressed in the fossil series.Coupled with this difficulty in interpreting their evolutionary status is the nature of the fossilrecord itself , which consists mainly of wood and impressions of leaves and leaf fragments with only a sprinkling of seeds and fruits to aid in their determination.
One of the most remarkable phenomena in biological evolutionary history is the rapidity with which the angiosperms arose to a position of dominance in the plant world during the latter part of the Mesozoic era.Many explanations have been offered but none are wholly acceptable.The problem is not a recent one because as early as 1879 Darwin is said to have written to Hooker, “ The rapid development,so far as we can judge , of all the higher plants within Recent geological time is an abominable mystery.Not only are plant evolutionts at a loss explain the seemingly abrupt rise of the flowering plants to a place of dominance ,but their originis likewise a mistery.
In the Pre-Cambrian and those early stages of the paleozoic preceding the Devonian,which together represent more than three-fourths of known geologic time , we know little of the plant life of the globe except for a few probable seaweeds ,lime-depositing algae and bacteria which might have been responsible for mineral deposition.The devonian has long been looked upon as having produced the first land plants ,but lately the silurian has yielded remains , which there is every reason to beleve grew upon land.
In order to achieve the fullest possible understanding of ancient plant lie consistent with the fragmentaryfossil record,it is ecessary that some attention be given the environment under which the plants grew.Although the probems of ancient environments are difficult and in most instances impossible of more than partial solution ,many inferences bearing on probable environments can be drawn from the distribution and structural modifications of ancient plants.Plants are sometimes called the thermometers of the past,which ,which they are when their temperature requirements are known ,but with most extinct species these requirements can only be inferred from what is known about the climatic relations of those living species which they most closely resemble.When living species are foundin the fossil condition ,we assume that they grew under conditions similar to those required by the species at present.Living species ,however ,decreasein numberss we delve into the past and very few can be recognized in rocks older than Tertiary.Consequently the same criteria of climatic adaptations cannot always be used for both extinct and living species.Varieties of climatic conditions existed in the long inervals between the periods of major glaciation.By the late Devonian time plants apparently to temperate eliminates had spread to the Arctic.
Geological history is punctuated with climatic fluctuations of major proportions.There waere times when much of the surface of the earth was covered with ice , and at other times luxuriant vegetation thrived almost at the poles.The most intensive glaciation occurred during the pre-Cambrian,the Permain , and the Pleistocene.
The names of plants and animals have made up a large part of man’s vocabulary as ong as he used language.He , however ,uses many languages but because science transcends racial lines and national boundaries it is necessary for users of scientific terminology to have some medium of common understanding.In chemistry this result is achieved by the use of standardized symbols for elements ,symbols that have the same meaning in any tongue.Biologist have attained this end by giving Latin and Greek names to all species of plants and animals,and in this way the confusion and lack of understanding that would result from the eclusive use of local or vernacular names is avoided.
Rules of Nomenclature.-Plants , both living and fossil are named according to the International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature,which were drawn up at the International Botanical Congress held in Vienna in 1905.These rules constitute the Vienna Code , which was founded upon an older code formulated in Paris in 1867.The Vienna Code was modified at Brussels in 1910,at Cambridgein 1930, and again at Amsterdam in 1935.
The species.-The unit in classifications is the species ,which is expressed in taxonomic language as the second term of a binomial.The implications of the term “ species “ are relative and are not absolute entities.In paleobotany as in modern botany the species name has the primary purpose of serving as a title for reference.The title may be used either to identify an individual with the larger group of which it is a part ,or in a more inclusive way to designate the whole group of similar individuals as a unit wihout reference to any particular individual.
According to the species concept those individuals which possess certain demonstrable characters in common are grouped together. Just which of the characters possessed by the individual are to be considered as pertinent to the species is a matter of which the investigator alone is the judge ,and this is where the human factor enters strongly into the matter of specific delimitations.


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