A family of extinct seed-bearing plants that lived during the Mesozoic Era, resembling a mix between ferns and cycads.
Named after John Bennett, an English fossil collector, with the Latinized suffix '-aceae' used for plant families, following Linnaean taxonomic convention established in the 18th century.
Bennettitaceae plants were the mysterious middle-ground organisms of the dinosaur age—they thrived when dinosaurs roamed but looked like nothing alive today, and their sudden extinction around 66 million years ago remains one of paleobotany's puzzles.
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