Plants that lived millions of years ago and became embedded in stratified rock provide the most accurate links in plant evolution and genetics. Fossils are preserved in many ways such as compressions, impressions, incrustations, casts, petrification, and inclusion in amber, with each method preserving different details of the plant. Paleobotany is important for reconstructing ancient ecosystems, climate, and the development and evolution of plants by studying plant fossils preserved in various forms and using techniques like radiocarbon dating to determine the age of fossils.

1. Plants that lived millions of years ago and
became embedded in stratified rock provide
the most accuratelinks in plant evolution and
genetics. Stratified rocks containing fossil
plants are usually found at the bottom of
lakes, seas, lagoons, rivers, beaches, swamps and
valleys. Fossils that are obtained are, in
most cases, not complete and require many
samples of the same plant species to
complete a particular study or
provide accurate or evidentiary material.

2. Fossils are preserved in many ways. They are;
1. Compressions: The most kind of preservation; the organic matter of the plant is preserved
with impressions of the plant. Here, compressions by vertical pressure of soil sediments on
the plant parts play a major role.
2. Impressions: Prints made my plants / plant parts on soft clay. When the plant decays and
the clay hardens, it leaves behind imprints of its skeletal structure. These are not necessarily
enclosed within and can differ from casts.
3. Incrustations / Casts: Most common type of fossils; formed when the plant gets covered up
(enclosed within) by sand or mud. The plant rots inside the sand coat leaving behind a hollow
of the plant imprint, showing exact details of the plant’s external features.
4. Petrification: This is when the external, internal and at times even the organic matter of
plants are preserved.
5. Compactions / Mummified plants: These are Plants compressed by vertical
pressure. Usually these are found in peat, lignite and coal where large and thick quantities of
the plant gets compacted and make for good microscopic studies.
6. Ambers: Resins which exuded from coniferous plants and fell on the forest floor often
collected insects and plant parts with it. When hardened, they preserved the entire plant part,
or insects as a whole, preventing decay of the entrapped item.
It is possible to calculate the age of the fossil by using the radioactive isotope C14. It adopts
the process of radiocarbon dating or simply carbon dating. the technique of radioactive
carbon dating was developed at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby in 1949. Since then
there have been great advances in the field of Palaeobotany and in the determination of ages
of all types of fossils.
Importance of paleobotany:
Paleobotany is important in the reconstruction of ancient ecological systems and
climate, known as paleoecology and paleoclimatology respectively; and is
fundamental to the study of green plant development and evolution. Paleobotany has
also become important to the field of archaeology, primarily for the use of phytoliths
in relative dating and in paleoethnobotany.