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Dik-Dik Van Dik
Skeptic Friend
United Kingdom
76 Posts |
 Posted - 04/15/2005 : 08:35:56
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What point did the split between animal and plant life occur? What was the common ancestor of both? Are fungi considered seperate from both? if so when did they branch off?
it occured to me that a planet with only plant life could have a functioning ecosystem, was this the case, then animals turned up? or did the animal and plant kiingdoms evolve in parallel?
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DARWIN 3:16
"The simple believeth every word." - Proverbs 14:15
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 04/15/2005 : 09:00:47 [Permalink]
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From the available evidence, impossible to say in my opinion. This split took place long before either became land-dwelling; possibly dating back to the original abiogenesis (or creation, if one prefers).
Interesting question, though.
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Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Plyss
Skeptic Friend
Netherlands
231 Posts |
Posted - 04/15/2005 : 09:10:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dik-Dik Van Dik
What point did the split between animal and plant life occur? What was the common ancestor of both? Are fungi considered seperate from both? if so when did they branch off?
it occured to me that a planet with only plant life could have a functioning ecosystem, was this the case, then animals turned up? or did the animal and plant kiingdoms evolve in parallel?
Tricky questions. What do you consider a plant? Do they have to be multicellular or do algae and such count? I'm pretty sure though that fungi are seperate from both animals and plants.
That tree-of-life page that someone posted recently has some interesting information as well as lots of references |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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bloody_peasant
Skeptic Friend
USA
139 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2005 : 07:21:47 [Permalink]
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According to genetic and molecular data fungi are more closely related to animals which might be also somewhat related to the fact they are both heterotrops as opposed to autotrophs like plants.
http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Eukaryotes
A kinda new concept within biology is domains which is higher than kingdoms. Accordingly there are 3 domains, prokaryotes, archae, & eukaryotes. |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2005 : 02:24:14 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Plyss
quote:
Originally posted by Dik-Dik Van Dik
What point did the split between animal and plant life occur? What was the common ancestor of both? Are fungi considered seperate from both? if so when did they branch off?
it occured to me that a planet with only plant life could have a functioning ecosystem, was this the case, then animals turned up? or did the animal and plant kiingdoms evolve in parallel?
Tricky questions. What do you consider a plant? Do they have to be multicellular or do algae and such count? I'm pretty sure though that fungi are seperate from both animals and plants.
That tree-of-life page that someone posted recently has some interesting information as well as lots of references
Ahem...that beskep posted.
If you start above the plant/mammal split you can follow it branch by branch until you come to the split. The web site is very detailed. It took me 10s of pages to get all the way to homosapien. |
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