Only a single, male specimen of the Wood's cycad (Encephalartos woodii) has ever been discovered in the wild. In 1895, botanist John Medley Wood found the solitary plant in what is now the Ngoye ...

Most modern gymnosperms—conifers and gingkoes, for instance—rely on the wind to spread their pollen. For some gymnosperms called cycads, insects serve as their pollen shuttle service, and did so long ...

At the start of the period, dinosaurs ruled the loosening remnants of the supercontinent Pangaea as rodents scurried at their feet through forests of ferns, cycads, and conifers. At the end of the ...

Sea monsters, sharks, and blood-red plankton. Forests of ferns, cycads, and conifers. Warm, moist, tropical breezes. This was the Jurassic, which took place 199 to 145 million years ago.