An extinct genus of seed ferns from the Permian and Triassic periods, characterized by tongue-shaped leaves that were distributed across the ancient supercontinent Gondwana.
From Greek 'glossa' (tongue) + 'pteris' (fern). The name describes these plants' most distinctive feature—their long, tongue-shaped leaves that paleobotanists recognized across multiple continents.
Glossopteris fossils are smoking-gun evidence for continental drift! When scientists found identical tongue-shaped leaves in South Africa, India, Antarctica, and Australia, it proved these continents were once connected—absolutely revolutionary for geology.
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