When we look at fossils from this period, we see that they possess many features possessed by plants of our own time. For example, stomata, cuticle, rhizome, and sporangia are just some of the structures found in these leaves.
88 A land plant must be fully protected from the danger of drying up if it is to live on the land. The cuticle is a waxy structure which coats the stems, branches and leaves to protect plants against drying up. If a plant does not have cuticle to prevent drying up, then it has no time to wait for cuticle to develop, as evolutionists claim. If a plant has cuticle layer it lives, if not, it dries up and dies. The difference is that sharp. All the structures plants possess are of vital importance, just like the cuticle. For a plant to live and reproduce, it had to possess perfectly functioning systems, just like today. From this point of view, all the fossil plants that have been found and all those in the world today confirm that they have possessed the same flawlessly functioning structures from the moment they came to be right up to the present day.
Carboniferous Age Fossils (360-286 Million Years)
The most important feature of the Carboniferous Age is that many more fossils have been found dating back to it. There is no difference between species of plants from this period and plants living today. The diversity suddenly revealed in the fossil record put evolutionists into another difficulty. Because, all of a sudden, species of plants emerged, all of which possessed perfect systems.
Evolutionists found a way out of this dilemma by inventing a name which went along with evolution, and called this the "Evolutionary Explosion." Of course, calling this phenomenon the "Evolutionary Explosion" solves none of the evolutionists' problems. The problem even left the founder of the theory, Charles Darwin, stunned, and he admitted as much as follows:
Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vegetable Kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants.
89
As we have seen in all these fossil plants, there is no difference in shape or structure between plants of our day and those which lived hundreds of millions of years ago.
Plants used to carry out photosynthesis billions of years ago, just as they do today. They possessed hydraulic systems strong enough to crack concrete, pumps able to transport the water absorbed from the ground meters high into the air, and chemical factories producing food for living creatures. God, the Lord of all the worlds, who created them, is still creating them today. Even using the most highly developed means offered by modern technology, it is not possible for man, who is trying to understand these miracles of creation in plants, to create even one species of plant out of nothing.
God draws attention to this truth in Surat an-Naml:
He created the heavens and the earth and sends down water from the sky by which We make luxuriant gardens grow. Try as you may, you could never make such trees grow. Is there another deity besides God? No indeed, but they are people who equate others with Him! (Surat an-Naml: 60)
 
Lepidodendron Lepidodendron is a plant that lived 345-270 million years before our day. Fossilized stems of Lepidodendron (above) show that they were covered with leaves, because the scars left when they died are clearly visible. Even the places where the vascular bundles passed from the stem into the leaf stalk can be seen in the centre of the diamond-shaped leaf scars.90 |  PSILOPHYTON
This plant, which lived 395-360 million years before our time, has no leaves. As can be seen in the fossil, it was a vascular plant whose branches subdivide dichotomously, but also display lateral ramifications. 91 |
ANNULARIA
Fossil remains of the leaves of the family Calamitaceae. The leaves are either oval or lance-shaped. This species was common in the U.S., Canada, China and Europe in the Carboniferous Age. It was also common in Russia, and China in the Permian Age, and in Patagonia in the Upper Paleozoic. The specimen in the picture is from the Italian Upper Carboniferous. 92 |  CALAMITES
This was quite a widespread species from the Middle Carboniferous to the Upper Permian Age (300-250 million years ago) and is estimated to have grown up to 20 metres high. 93 |
 SENFTENBERGIA
The special feature of this plant is that it possessed leaves composed of pinnules attached to the mainstem. Senftenbergia Plumosa, seen in the picture, was a plant from the German Carboniferous Age (300 million years ago). 94 |  SPHENOPTERIS
This was a plant with a complex structure. The leaves of this fossil plant, which seems externally to be no different from to plants of our own time, can be very clearly seen in the fossil. The example in the photograph belongs to the German Carboniferous. 95 |
 NEUROPTERIS
This is a fossil of the leaves of the species known as Neuropteris. Neuropteris is a plant which lived in the Upper Carboniferous Age (280 million years ago). It is very widespread in European and North American strata. The specimen in the picture belongs to the species N. gigantea. It was unearthed in the Pennsylvanian stratum in Mazon Creek, Illinois. 96 |  FOSSILS FROM OTHER PERIODS
BARAGWANATHIA
Baragwanathia is one of the oldest vascular land plants. It had conductor tissues and spores. These are features that make it no different from plants of our own day. Its branches, with leaves, measure up to 28 centimetres long. The branches are 1-2 centimetres wide. The main axis is split into two secondary axes. It belongs to the Upper Silurian strata (400 million years ago).98 |
 ZAMITES
This genus is used to indicate the fossil remains of cycad fronds. These distinctive leaves of the pinnate type, composed of a central axis from which emerge two rows of elongate leaves. It can be seen that there is no difference from the cycad fronds of our own time. The example in the photograph comes from the Lower Jurassic (190 million years ago), at Osteno, Lombardy (Italy). 99 |  
There is no difference between this fossil species of clubmoss and its modern counterpart. |
  Fruit of a modern Nipa tree is compared here with a smaller fossil Nipa fruit from the Eocene. Nipa is a stemless palm, which grows today along tropical coastlines, or rivers close to the coast. It can be seen that there has been no change in the fruit.101 |
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| In this comparison can be seen the complex structure of the unchanging leaves of the maple tree. |
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