Tichavekia: a giant among the earliest land plants

A paper describing the terrestrial plant Tichavekia grandis was published in the Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology journal. It is co-authored by two members of the Institute of Geology, Monika Uhlířová and Jiří Bek. The plant lived in the Barrandian area (Czech Republic) some 420 million years ago. It was named after František Tichávek of the West Bohemian Museum in Plzeň, who had found the described specimen. Representatives of the oldest terrestrial plants are known by the simple organization of their bodies, usually reaching only a few centimetres in size. The plant of T. grandis is remarkable in its height of 13 cm and its unique features.