Pinpointing when early land plants colonized terrestrial environments and began influencing Earth's systems is a core question in the evolution of the Earth system. A research team led by Prof. Zhao Mingyu at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has uncovered evidence indicating that land plants may have started reshaping Earth's surface environments far earlier than previously recognized. Their findings are published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.