... the Rhynie chert ...
Among all fossiliferous cherts worldwide, the Lower Devonian chert from Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, has provided the most spectacular contributions to paleobotany. Soon after its discovery in 1912 the marvellous preservation of tiny details in the silicified strata became a subject of wonder and scientific interest. The early publications by KIDSTON and LANG seemed to be so thorough that for decades, others were apparently rather discouraged than incited to do more research. The terrestrial plants Rhynia (two species), Asteroxylon, and Horneophyton became prominent items of every paleobotany monograph. Moreover, there were algae, microbes, and abundant hyphae and sclerotia of various fungi, all together providing ample information on the whole biotope with its interrelations of species. The preservation has allowed the complex build of mites, spider-like trigonotarbids, and crustaceans with their numerous legs and appendices to be reconstructed.
Only in the last decades of the century it became obvious that the Rhynie chert had much more in store. New plants were found: Nothia (1964), Trichopherophyton (1991), Ventarura (1994, published 2000). Deeper investigations shed a new light on the ones already known (with the consequence of substituting the name Aglaophyton for Rhynia major). It became apparent that the plants formerly denoted as rhyniophytes may represent diverging lines of development near decisive branching points and thus may be crucial for the completion of the still much disputed phylogenetic tree of plants.
Something excitingly new was the discovery of large gametophytes of some Rhynie plants at Münster University, which started in 1980 and is still going on today. This has revived the old dispute about the problem of where to place the mosses and liverworts in the phylogenetic tree. (Note that for the latter, the gametophyte constitutes the main part of the plant whereas it is much reduced in the "higher plants".)
By geological research at Aberdeen University combined with chemical analysis it has been proven that the chert formation was related to hot spring activity. N. TREWIN (Aberdeen) characterizes the present situation in this way: "I feel we have only scratched the surface of the Rhynie story, and this premier Scottish locality will continue to yield exciting stories in a variety of disciplines for decades to come." Rich information including pictures and references is provided on the websites of Muenster University and Aberdeen University.
text: H.-J. WEISS/Rabenau, photographs: H. SAHM/Dresden
