This DATSETNAMEreadme.txt file was generated on 2021-08-11 by ANDREW LESLIE GENERAL INFORMATION 1. Title of Dataset: Reproductive Complexity Data 2. Author Information A. Principal Investigator Contact Information Name: Andrew Leslie Institution: Stanford University Address: 450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 320, Room 118, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. Email: aleslieb@stanford.edu B. Associate or Co-investigator Contact Information Name: Luke Mander Institution: The Open University Address: Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK. Email: luke.mander@gmail.com 3. Citation: A.B. Leslie, C. Simpson, L. Mander. 2021. Reproductive innovations and pulsed rise in plant complexity. Science. DATA & FILE OVERVIEW File List: 1. Complexity Data.txt 2. Complexity Data Citations.txt "Complexity Data.txt" contains all data used in our analyses, including full character scorings for each reproductive structure. Literature sources for each reproductive structure are provided as a numerical list in the first column ("reference") of this data file. The full citations themselves are provided in "Complexity Data Citations.txt", where they are numbered according to the "reference" column in "Complexity Data.txt". DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: Complexity Data.txt 1. Number of variables: 33 2. Number of cases/rows: 1504 3. Variable List: 1. Reference: citation(s) used to score each reproductive structure; numbers correspond to those in "Complexity Data Citations.docx". 2. Taxon: species to which each reproductive structure belongs. 3-7. Group1-5: nested taxonomic affiliations for each reproductive structure. 8. Habit: whether a given reproductive structure was produced by a free-sporing vascular plant (pteridophytes including lycophytes, ferns, etc.) or a seed plant. 9. Order Group: basic groups used in the analyses presented in the main text and the order in which groups are figured in Figs. 2, S4. These numbers also correspond to the organization of the Supplementary Data. Where possible, these groups are based on resolved clades; for taxa with unknown affinities, they may represent heterogenous groupings used for convenience. 10. Fossil: whether a given reproductive structure is extant or known from the fossil record. 11. Mega: whether (1) or not (0) a given reproductive structure has female functionality; that is, whether it produces either megaspores or seeds (a specialized type of megaspore). Bisexual reproductive structures are scored as “1” because they have female functionality. 12-14: Period/Epoch/Stage: geologic age of fossil reproductive structures; recorded to most finely resolved time interval. 15-17: Maximum, minimum, and midpoint absolute age: absolute age (millions of years ago) of fossil reproductive structures based on the age range of its most finely resolved geologic time interval or radiometric dating of its locality. 18. Arrangement analysis: whether (1) or not (0) a given reproductive structure was used in analyses of unique character arrangements. Taxa were generally excluded if their complete arrangement was not preserved (e.g., inflorescence arrangement was not preserved) or if the reproductive structure was identical to another member of the same genus in the dataset (see Supplementary Materials and Methods for complete explanation). 19-26. Complexity and Arrangement Characters: basic complexity data for our analyses, including METs (S2) and arrangement scores (A1-A6). For full explanation of the characters and a rationale for their scoring, see Supplementary Materials and Methods. S1. How many types of sporangia are present? S2_MET. How many morphological element types (METs) are present? A1. How many total unique types (sporangia and METs) are repeated? (1°repetition) A2. How many types are clustered? (2° repetition) A3. How many types display two orders of clustering (3° repetition) A4. How many types display three orders of clustering (4° repetition) A5. How many types display four orders of clustering (5° repetition) A6. How many types display five orders of clustering (6° repetition) 27-29. Minimum, maximum, and average number of METs (Character S2): for reproductive structures with some uncertainty in number of MET number (due to different interpretations of their morphology, or more commonly, incomplete preservation) a potential range is given by these characters. Analyses presented in the paper typically use the average value, although the arrangement analyses used a single representative value (the "S2_MET" column). 30-32. Minimum, maximum, and average number of BSUs: these values represent an alternative approach to tallying the number of part types in each reproductive structure, where we focus on only the major structures (Basic Structural Units) that compose them. Typically, these represent organs (see Supplementary Materials and Methods explanation). For reproductive structures with some uncertainty in the number of BSUs, a potential range is given by these characters. Our analyses are typically based on the average value. 33. Abiotic pollination: only scored for seed plants, this character records whether the reproductive structures pollinate strictly via abiotic vectors (“1”; including wind and water) or via biotic vectors (“0”; including insects, mammals, birds, as well as some with mixed wind/animal pollination). Fossil taxa are not scored due to the possibility of circular reasoning; more complex reproductive structures are often assumed to be biotically pollinated. 4. Missing data codes: missing or inapplicable data given as "NA".