Plants crawled onto land earlier than we give them credit, genetic evidence suggests

Plant biologists agree that it all began with green algae. At some point in our planet’s history, the common ancestor of trees and flowers developed an alternating life cycle — allowing their offspring to conquer Earth. But now scientists argue that some green algae had been hanging out on land hundreds of millions of years before this adaptation and that land plants actually evolved from terrestrial, not aquatic, algae.
Paleontology News — ScienceDaily