Book excerpt: This book provides up-to-date coverage of fossil plants from Precambrian life to flowering plants, including fungi and algae. It begins with a discussion of geologic time, how organisms are preserved in the rock record, and how organisms are studied and interpreted and takes the student through all the relevant uses and interpretations of fossil plants. With new chapters on additional flowering plant families, paleoecology and the structure of ancient plant communities, fossil plants as proxy records for paleoclimate, new methodologies used in phylogenetic reconstruction and the addition of new fossil plant discoveries since 1993, this book provides the most comprehensive account of the geologic history and evolution of microbes, algae, fungi, and plants through time. Major revision of a 1993 classic reference Lavishly illustrated with 1,800 images and user friendly for use by paleobotanists, biologists, geologists and other related scientists Includes an expanded glossary with an extensive up-to-date bibliography and a comprehensive index Provides extensive coverage of fungi and other microbes, and major groups of land plants both living and extinct