SYDNEY – Australian researchers found a 400-million-year-old fossil plant that provides more insights into the global evolution of early land plants. The fossil was named as Taungurungia garrattii, after it was found in Taungurung sites in the state of Victoria.

The last name, garrattii, is to further acknowledge one of the researchers, Dr. Michael Garratt, for his decades of research. Taungurungia garrattii was found and collected from rocks of Early Devonian age by PhD researcher Fearghus McSweeney and Garratt from Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in 2015. Relevant paper was published in the Memoirs of Museum Victoria and unveiled by the university on Tuesday.

Growing to about 20 cm high, Taungurungia garrattii combined specialized triangle-shaped bodies for photosynthesis along its stems, and a large, elongated outgrowth for bearing spores. McSweeney found the delicate structures along its stems, possibly representing buds or sterile sporangia (enclosures where spores are formed).

The combination of large, elongate sporangia with specialized structures for photosynthesis in Taungurungia garrattii was also found as twice the size as the similarly aged fossil Yunia dichotoma, which has similar characteristics, from Yunnan province in southwest China.

“This is the first occurrence outside China and suggests this group of plants was more distributed. However, it is entirely possible they are not related and could reflect convergent evolution,” McSweeney said. Researchers explained that at the time Taungurungia grew on land, the land masses making up Australia and China were much closer together, therefore this discovery could also inspire more thoughts about the early origin and success of land plants.

“Taungurungia garrattii is not just about the evolution of Victorian plants but plants globally, as this group of plants are very rare,” McSweeney said.