Sphagnum in establishment of new populations in disturbed habitats and on islands. Decayed, dried sphagnum moss has the name of peat or peat moss. This is used as a soil conditioner which increases the soil's capacity to hold water and nutrients by increasing capillary forces and cation exchange capacity. This is often necessary when dealing with very sandy soil, or plants that need increased or steady moisture content to flourish. A distinction is sometimes made between sphagnum moss, the live moss growing on top of a peat bog, and 'sphagnum peat moss' (North American usage) or 'sphagnum peat' (British usage), the
Moss Antarctica and Russia, and a case is put forwards for Carboniferous mosses. It has further been claimed that tube-like fossils from the Silurian are the macerated remains of moss calyptræ. Mosses also appear to evolve 2–3 times slower than ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms. Recent research show that ancient moss could explain why the Ordovician ice ages occurred. When the ancestors of today's moss started to spread on land 470 million years ago, they absorbed CO from the atmosphere and extracted minerals by secreting organic acids that dissolved the rocks they were growing on. These chemically altered rocks in turn reacted