Sandy Hetherington

Super excited to see Atlas of Botany in print!!! A pleasure to work with the wonderful team from DK and the @thebotanics.bsky.social I wrote the Ancient Biomes section covering some of my favourite stories about plant evolution from the last 500 million years! @instmolplantsci.bsky.social

Congratulations to @sannie-zishanfu.bsky.social for publishing the major paper from her PhD in Nature Plants. 👇🎉🌿 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Wonderful collaboration with @rafadscruz.bsky.social and @jensen-research.bsky.social @ukri.org #UKRIFLF @instmolplantsci.bsky.social

New OA Article: "Reconstructing spore evolution recalibrates the timescale of land plant diversification" rdcu.be/ZqJutaiDfFLa This study models the evolution of spore characteristics in living land plants to reinterpret their spore-dominated early fossil record. #PlantScience

Our latest: Reconstructing spore evolution recalibrates the timescale of land plant diversification, led by Jack Hooper, Annie Worth, with help from Charles Wellman @jameswclark.bsky.social and myself. file:///Users/glpcjd/Downloads/s41477-026-02432-3.pdf

@swbiodtp.bsky.social will soon be advertising a competitively funded PhD with myself, @jameswclark.bsky.social & Davide Pisani @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social on the 'evolutionary assembly of plant genomes, development and phenotype', application deadline of Dec 2 - please contact me if interested

Great opportunity for a Assistant/Associate/Full Professor and Curator of Paleobotany at @yale.edu apply.interfolio.com/194803

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper alert! My talented postdoc Dana Korneisel has just published a paper from her PhD project in Nature. First and corresponding author! Experiments using sturgeon (which have a vertebral column with a persisting notochord) indicate that early tetrapods didn't really have a mobile neck.🧪

Are you looking for a PhD in the area of plant evolution? If so do apply to join the lab for this competitively funded @gpsep.bsky.social PhD project to study the evolution of branching architecture by combing data from fossils, ferns and genes. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

🚨Postdoc job alert: Come work with my paleontology & evolution group in Edinburgh! Researcher in Cognitive Evolution Over Deep Time. You'll study how brains & neurons have evolved over time, and predict neuron count in extinct species! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DTC355/p...

For actually constructing phylogenetic trees, I have compiled this separate repository which I have written over several years with advice and best practices for constructing phylogenetic trees. Any feedback on this is also welcome! github.com/davidjhoey/p...

Introducing PhyloDig: a small command-line tool I am developing to make comparative phylogenetic analyses easier. github.com/davidjhoey/P...

🧵 1/8 Have you ever wondered how information embedded within exons regulates gene expression in plants? 🌱🧬 Check out our latest work, where we explore how exonic enhancers (EEs) shape gene expression in plants! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The paper a lot of our lab (@sannie-zishanfu.bsky.social @sandyheth.bsky.social @anajusagasti.bsky.social) contributed to on the indepedent origins of the endodermis with Tom Beeckman and Xilian Yang is out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🚨Cover reveal🚨: My first non-academic book: How to Find a Martian: A Fossil Hunter's Guide to the Red Planet. Published Spring 2027 by @oneworldbooks.bsky.social (UK/Ireland/Commonwealth, this cover) and @uchicagopress.bsky.social (North America, other cover). 100% human-authored!

🧪 Join Bhatia Group as a Research Assistant! Help uncover how the plant hormone cytokinin shapes plant development using Arabidopsis thaliana, while working in a collaborative & supportive research environment 🌱 www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc... Closes 13 Aug 2026 #plantscijobs

Hollaar, T.P., Kent, M.S., Lomax, B.H. et al. Continental-scale fern savannah wildfires during end-Triassic greenhouse warming. Nat. Geosci. (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Our work on pattern formation in fossil and extant liverworts is out! @dev-journal.bsky.social Check it out if you are interested in fossils, evo-devo, and how mathematical modeling can help us understand the evolution of developmental processes! 🌿🧪 Thread ⬇️

Learn about the UV response of the earliest land plants #evolution of the phenylpropanoid pathway—& its divergence in zygnematophyte #algae at Cece's @caeciliafkunz.bsky.social poster 100-042 #PlantBio2026 @aspbofficial.bsky.social & checkout @currentbiology.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

Here's a taster from my segment on Monday's episode of The Sky at Night, now available on BBC iPlayer:

🌿🪨 #PaleoBotanyWeek 🦕 Comparative rhizotaxy of fossil and living isoetalean rhizomorphs reveals development through rootlet intercalation within a triangular lattice by Wyman and co-authors. #freeaccess article 👉 doi.org/q76q @sandyheth.bsky.social #Paleobotany #PlantEvolution #Botany

🕸️ DARWIN REVIEW 🕸️ Robil & Scarpella show that vein patterns are more diverse than commonly thought, and identification of vein precursor cells is arbitrary and inconsistent across species, thus challenging current understanding of vein patterns 🌿 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪

When did liverwort oil body cells originate? Here, Susan and I provide quantitative evidence that they emerged by at least the Middle Devonian (~390 Ma!), shedding light on a key anti-herbivory defense mechanism of early land plants!

🌿Brand new research out in Science today about angiosperm reproductive strategies and how they preceded the K-Pg mass extinction, led by UCMP PhD student, Jaemin Lee, and curator, Cindy Looy!🌿 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🔥 Published today, and just in time for summer conferences, here are your guidelines for presenting badly www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/fqa92

Diversification of angiosperm reproductive strategies predated the end-Cretaceous extinction | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Because the Rhynie chert plants include plants with xylem but without true phloem, this suggests that xylem and phloem did not have a common origin within the land plants, but rather both tissues evolved gradually and independently, occurring in their modern form in at different times. 10.

This suggests that in the Rhynie chert plants, there was a tissue specialised in sugar conduction, but was distinct, and likely not as specialised and effective, as the phloem of extant vascular plants. 9/

But we found that the FCCs of Asteroxylon did have (submicron!) sieve pores, which in extant plants is involved in the movement of sugars through the phloem, suggesting this tissue did have a sugar conduction specialisation. This is the earliest example of sieve pores in the fossil record. 8/

These FCCs had some, but not all, of the features of phloem of extant vascular plants. The Rhynie chert plants didn't have a distinction between FCCs and cortical cells, or a boundary between these tissues, and the FCCs are very large in diameter compared to phloem cells. 7/

The Rhynie chert plants had a tissue called FCCs (food conducting cells) around the central strand of xylem (or water conducting cells), in the position that phloem is in extant plants. 6/

I also compared these plants with the extant lycophytes, the earliest diverging group of living vascular plants, and the group to which one of the Rhynie chert species (Asteroxylon mackiei) belongs. Illustration by @palaeojules.bsky.social 5/

I imaged the Rhynie chert plants using confocal laser scanning microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, two very high resolution imaging techniques that can be used to identify sub-micron features in these fossil plants. 4/

The plant species preserved here include non-vascular plants that are close relatives of vascular plants, and plants that belong in modern groups, so they can be used to investigate the early evolution of major traits of vascular plants like phloem. 3/

To understand these sort of fundamental questions in plant evolution, we can examine the exceptionally preserved plants of the Rhynie chert, a 407 million year old fossil deposit where some of the earliest land plants are preserved through the activity of a hot spring. Art by Victor Leshyk. 2/

Phloem is the highly specialised sugar conducting tissue found in all living vascular plants, and it is today always occurs with xylem, the specialised water conducting tissue. Both of these tissues enabled plants to become larger and more complex, but how did these tissues evolve? 1/

Congratulation @transitionalform.bsky.social @instmolplantsci.bsky.social for publishing the next chapter of your thesis @currentbiology.bsky.social ! Great work showing that the two fundamental vascular tissues - xylem and phloem evolved asynchronously. Read Laura's thread for more details 👇👇

Our paper on the origin and evolution of phloem, a big part of my PhD work, is out in Current Biology! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

📣 It's out ! ✨32✨ great #paleobotany papers in this special issue of @annbot.bsky.social on fossil #plants 🌿⛏️ edited by Mihai Tomescu, @sandyheth.bsky.social, Brian Atkinson & myself. Thank you to all the authors & all the reviewers for their contributions! 📄 academic.oup.com/aob/issue

With The Story of Birds now out in the UK, I'm super excited to launch it here in my home of Edinburgh! In one of the most beautiful, charming bookshops in the world: Toppings! Join us on June 23, 7pm. Tickets👇 www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/edinb...

This episode is now available on BBC Sounds www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

The paper is not online yet but it's too pretty not to show for this #FossilFriday: a new species of Keraphyton from the Late Devonian of Australia, part of the work of @toinechampreux.bsky.social. Keraphyton is an iridopteridale, an extinct group related to ferns & horsetails. #paleobotany 🌿⛏️

Our latest review on the evolution of molecular networks involved in the development of plant conducting tissues is now out in @jxbotany.bsky.social @ibmcp.bsky.social Check it out here: academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...

Happy to announce that I have started my own research group at the MPIPZ and that I am looking for a postdoc who would like to investigate Marchantia prothallus development with me! Please spread the word and/or apply if interested :)

Huge congratulations to Beverley Glover & Uta Paszkowski on being elected Fellows of the @royalsociety.org - a wonderful recognition of their significant contributions to plant sciences! 🎉 Read more: tinyurl.com/3vetucr4 @beverleycubg.bsky.social @paszkowskilab.bsky.social 🧪

Incredibly proud of this paper showing how plants couple vesicle delivery and phragmoplast expansion during division. This project started in the lab of the great and late Ian Moore, and it was a joy to finish it with @liamelliottplants.bsky.social et al! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Hi all, Just a reminder that we're still accepting talk and poster abstracts for our Symposium Plant Paleoart: Perspectives and Promises, and the deadline is in two weeks, on the 31st May! I'm really looking forward to seeing some of you there!!! #FossilFriday #paleobotany #paleoart #sciart

This artwork was created last year for @jeremywyman.bsky.social and @sandyheth.bsky.social, to accompany their paper 'Comparative rhizotaxy of fossil and living isoetalean rhizomorphs reveals development through rootlet intercalation within a triangular lattice'. #paleoart #paleobotany #paleontology