The problem of the origin and evolution of mosses

The article briefly examines the origin of the bryophytes as a special group of archegoniates and their differentiation into three main groups, such as Anthocerotophyta, Marchantiophyta and Bryophyta in the rank of divisions. Their modern forms have served as conceptual models for comparative morphological analysis in the historical and ecological aspect. They act as analogs for tracing the genesis of the three main taxa. At the same time, the phylogenetic distance between them is so great that they cannot be combined into a single ancestral taxon, even at the level of the primary archegoniates; there is their radical difference from vascular plants in this. The common ancestor of archegoniates is a hypothetically haploid alga with the structure of the body cells as in the initial Anthocerotophyta according to the morphological type. The haplophase of moss of the genus Takakia was used as the primary morphological model for the structural decomposition of its vegetative body. Proceeding from this, we put forward the hypothesis of a vaguely similar character of leaf formation in mosses with that of pteridophytes from stem-like structures and further the display of some similarity with the formation of leaf in seed plants, only in time much earlier. Hence, it follows, that the phyletic convergence of Bryophyta with Marchantiophyta is unreal.