Birbal Sahni Introduces the Pentoxyleae

paleobotanical papers.Some have been descriptions of new plant fossils that have expanded our view of the natural world and added bricks into the wall of knowledge of plants of the past.Others have been landmark contributions that have stimulated new ideas and raised new questions.A paper by Professor Birbal Sahni FRS, one of the great paleobotanical figures of the mid-twentieth century, was of this second kind.Sahni (1948) introduced an entirely new group of extinct plants, the Pentoxyleae (commonly referred to as Pentoxylales), which have been featured in textbooks and surveys of fossil and living seed plants ever since.Sahni's presentation of the Pentoxylales was a masterful synthesis.However, as Sahni himself noted (Sahni 1948 p. 79), determining how Pentoxylales are related to other seed plants is a puzzle, and it is still not resolved.Birbal Sahni was a major figure in the development of science in India.As his