The Lycopods - a Symposium at the 40th Annual AIBS Meeting in Toronto, Canada, 6-10 August, 1989

乔治梅森大学的朱迪思·斯科格博士和她在史密森尼的同事威廉·迪米雪儿博士组织了一个为期一天的植物学家和古生物学家研讨会，以综合最古老的维管陆地植物——石松类植物的形态和遗传信息。现代的松苔和刺柳属植物是这一物种中幸存的物种，在其漫长的化石历史中，包括石炭纪的大树和其他形式的树木，为北美的巨大煤层做出了贡献。古生物学家将分析该物种在其4亿年历史中多样化和灭绝的模式，植物学家将描述世界上现存物种的形态和遗传变异，并评估该物种当前进化状态的原因。来自美国、丹麦和英国的研究人员将在研讨会上发表论文，从而代表了目前对这些原始陆地植物的全面研究。

Dr. Judith Skog of George Mason University, working with her Smithsonian colleague Dr. William DiMichele, has organized a day- long symposium of botanists and paleontologists to synthesize morphological and genetic information on the most ancient lineage of vascular land plants, the lycopods. Modern-day pine moss and quillworts are among the surviving species of this group, which in its long fossil history included large trees of the Carboniferous and other forms contributing to the great coal beds of North America. Paleontologists will analyze the patterns of diversification and of extinction that characterize the group throughout its 400 million year history, and botanists will describe the morphological and genetic variability present in the world's living species and assess reasons for the current evolutionary status of the group. Researchers from the U.S., Denmark, and Britain will present papers at the symposium, thus representing the full range of current study on these primitive land plants.