Savannahs, steppes, and pampas are types of ecosystems that can be found in many places around the world today. They are open, relatively flat landscapes, covered with a green blanket of various plants, among which trees and shrubs are extremely rare. The basis of these ecosystems consists of plants that we typically call "grass", but most of them, from a biological point of view, are cereals. These are fast-growing herbaceous flowering plants that produce specific fruits known as caryopses. Grasses appeared in nature relatively late, about 66-23 million years ago in the late Paleogene, and widespread savannahs, as we know them today, appeared even later, in the Neogene period, about 23-2.6 million years ago.

However, even before the appearance of modern "savannahs," there were plain spaces dominated by grasses. But this was not our usual "lawn grass". The main herbaceous plants were represented by ferns. There were also other plants - horsetails, clubmosses, and by the Cretaceous p...