Palaeontology
Phytoliths are abundant in the fossil record, and have been reported from the Late Devonian onwards. They can be used to identify palaeoenvironments and track vegetational change.
Occasionally, paleontologists find and identify phytoliths associated with extinct plant-eating animals (i.e. herbivores). Findings such as these reveal useful information about the diet of these extinct animals, and also shed light on the evolutionary history of many different types of plants. Paleontologists in India have recently identified grass phytoliths in dinosaur dung (coprolites), strongly suggesting that the evolution of grasses began earlier than previously thought.
Japanese and Korean archaeologists refer to grass and crop plant phytoliths as 'plant opal' in archaeological literature.
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