Thanks to you, Mel, the poor guy probably lost another bar bet.

Its good to quash the popular myth that evolution is something akin to a
horse race. Darwinian "Survival of the fittest" is not a betting sport. (Or
is it?)


"mel turner" wrote in message
...
"Ali" wrote in message
oups.com...
During evolution, Which one came first: Monocots or Dicots?

The old monocot/dicot distinction is now understood to be a
misleading one. They aren't two equivalent groupings of plants
at all.

"Monocotyledons" are actually still a "good" (monophyletic) group,
but "dicotyledons" turns out to really mean "any and all angiosperms
[flowering plants] other than the monocots". It's just a paraphyletic,
"everything else" grouping, and not a single evolutionary lineage.

Monocots are in fact one of the early flowering plant branches, but
there are a number of lineages of "dicots" more basal on the tree
than the monocots.

Therefore, by the traditional usage of the terms "dicots" came
first and monocots evolved from one particular line of the early
"dicots". It's more accurate if we substitute "flowering plants"
or "angiosperms" for "dicots".

Self
pollinated plants or cross pollinated plants?

Pollination of course arose a long time before flowering plants.
As for whether early seed plants were strictly outcrossing or
indulged in some self-pollination, no one knows. No doubt the
same goes for the early flowering plants.

http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/Research/APweb/welcome.html
http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Angiosp...=Spermatopsida
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/anthophyta/anthophyta.html
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/taxaform.html

have info, refs., and further links on flowering plant
phylogeny.

cheers