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Protosalvinia is a prehistoric plant found commonly in shale from shoreline habitats of the Upper Devonian period. The name Protosalvinia is a misnomer. The name literally means early Salvinia, and was given in the erroneous belief that the fossils were an earlier form of the living aquatic fern Salvinia. It is no longer believed that the fossils come from a fern, but deciding exactly what the fossils represent is still a matter of debate.
The most likely interpretation of Protosalvinia is that it represents either a fossil liverwort or a brown alga, although no definitive brown algae have been identified from before the Tertiary period, and examination of the spore structure shows no features in common with living groups of brown algae. The living plant was a thallus with short dichotomous branching. The branches in the largest species were as much as one centimeter across.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Protosalvinia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
