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Aglaophyton major (or more correctly Aglaophyton majus) was the sporophyte generation of a diplohaplontic, pre-vascular, axial, free-sporing land plant of the Lower Devonian (Pragian stage, around 410 million years ago). It had anatomical features intermediate between those of the bryophytes and vascular plants or tracheophytes.
A. major was first described by Kidston and Lang in 1920 as the new species Rhynia major. The species is known only from the Rhynie chert in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where it grew in the vicinity of a silica-rich hot spring, together with a number of associated vascular plants such as a smaller species Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii which may be interpreted as a representative of the ancestors of modern vascular plants and Asteroxylon mackei, which was an ancestor of modern clubmosses (Lycopsida).
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Aglaophyton by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
