Links for Palaeobotanists 1

An annotated collection of pointers to information on palaeobotany
or to WWW resources which may be of use to palaeobotanists (with an Upper Triassic bias).

! W.A. DiMichele et al. (2025): Climate, not transport from �uplands� or �extrabasinal lowlands,� is the cause of drought-tolerant terrestrial organisms in the late Paleozoic fossil record. Abstract, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 676.
"... A long-standing interpretation of the Pennsylvanian �Coal Age� tropical landscape partitions it along an elevational gradient, with wetland, drought-intolerant plants and animals occupying lowland, basinal settings, and increasingly drought-tolerant plants and animals colonizing progressively more remote areas, termed �extrabasinal lowlands� and �uplands�
[...] Xeromorphic plants, terrestrialized animals in basinal lowlands reflect climate change not transport from extrabasinal areas
[...] we reexamine here the basis for rejecting the �upland� trope as an explanation for unusual, rarely encountered Late Paleozoic plant and animal fossils or for patterns in their time-space distribution ..."

S.A.F. Darroch et al. (2025): �Earth system engineers� and the cumulative impact of organisms in deep time. Open access, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2025.08.005. See here as well.
"... we present a new framework applicable to both modern and ancient engineering-type effects. We propose a new term � �Earth system engineering� � to describe biological processes that alter the structure and function of planetary spheres ..."

! H. Nakayama and N.R. Sinha (2025): Leaf evolution: integrating phylogenetics, developmental dynamics, and genetic insights across land plants. Open access, New Phytologist, 248: 2205�2220. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70597. See also here (in PDF).
"... In this review, we focus on the current understanding of leaf evolution by integrating phylogenetic relationships, the developmental dynamics of the shoot apical meristem � the site of leaf initiation � and comparative analyses of leaf morphogenesis in the context of key regulatory genes across plant lineages ..."

E.M. Friis et al. (2011): Early Flowers and Angiosperm Evolution. Abstract, Cambridge University Press.
Retrieved from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. See also here (in PDF, long download time) and there (Google books). Also worth checking out:
Book Review, by P.J. Rudall, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 170. In PDF.
"... This long-awaited book represents not only a remarkable tour de force of palaeobotanical literature, but also a potentially enduring biological textbook. ..."

W. Huang and X. Wang (2025): Fossil evidence of orchid-like dust seeds in Myanmar amber featuring early angiosperm radiation. Open access, Scientific Reports, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-27211-6. See likewise here (in PDF).
"... we report a group of well-preserved tiny seeds embedded in Myanmar amber
[...] The present discovery reflects that, during their mid-Cretaceous radiation, at least some taxa adopted a strategy similar to that of extant orchids ..."

Z. Yuan et al. (2026): Early land plant evolution facilitated marine animal dispersal: Insights from the Late Ordovician�Early Devonian microconchids. Abstract, Earth-Science Reviews, 272. See here as well (in PDF).
Note figure 1: Various animals perching on or attached to driftwood in the modern ecosystem.
"... Rafting is an effective biotic dispersal mechanism that enables organisms, in particular the terrestrial and coastal ones that are unable to survive in the open ocean, to cross the wide expanses of ocean basins. Studies on modern ecosystems show that floating remains of land plants could serve as dispersal vehicles for diverse organisms, from microscopic fungi to large reptiles. This phenomenon has also been documented in the fossil record, as exem plified by the Triassic crinoid Traumatocrinus colonies attached to driftwood ..."

W. Liu et al. (2025): High-temperature wood silicification: Constraints from fluid and carbonaceous inclusions in quartz from Qitai, NW China. Open access, Scientific Reports, 15. See here as well.
! Note figure 1a: field photograph of a siliceous stump.
"... findings provide the first quantitative P�T constraints on wood fossilization, revisit its thermal limits, and facilitate the study of wood fossil genesis in volcanic environments globally. Quantifying the P�T thresholds of wood silicification not only renews models of plant fossil preservation but also provides insights into how forest fossils reflect extreme palaeoenvironments ..."

M.G. Mángano et al. (2024): Bioturbators as ecosystem engineers in space and time. Open access, Palaeontology, 67.
"... The trace-fossil record offers hard data to evaluate bioturbation as a driving force in ecosystem re-structuring and as a key factor in geobiological cycles. Models assessing these fundamental issues should be rooted empirically at different scales, from both autoecological and synecological to macroecological ..."

D. Frank et al. (2022): Dendrochronology: Fundamentals and innovations.
PDF file, chapter 2 in R.T.W. Siegwolf et al. (eds): Stable isotopes in tree rings: Inferring physiological, climatic and environmental responses (pp. 21�59). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92698-4_2.
See likewise here.

The Paleontological Society.
The Paleontological Society is an international nonprofit organization devoted to all aspects of paleontology. Their goal is to build a society that mirrors the diversity of our world, and we welcome all kinds of paleontologists as members � professional, early career, student, K-12 teacher, and avocational. Go to:
! A Guide to Outreach: Engaging the Public with Paleontology. In PDF.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation grants research fellowships and research awards to highly qualified scholars and scientists of all nationalities not resident in Germany, enabling them to undertake periods of research in Germany, as well as research fellowships to highly qualified German scholars, enabling them to spend periods of research at the institutes of former Humboldt guest-researchers abroad.

Nature.com: How to construct a Nature summary paragraph (in PDF). Available via Geomar Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel.
Annotated example taken from Nature 435, 114-118 (May 05, 2005).

! H. Jurikova et al. (2025): Rapid rise in atmospheric CO₂ marked the end of the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age. Open access, Nature Geoscience, 18: 91�97. See likewise here (in PDF).
Note figure 3: Palaeozoic CO₂ from different proxies.
Figure 5: The end of the LPIA [Late Palaeozoic Ice Age]and the dawn of the Early Permian warmth. Palaeo-artistic rendering based on findings of this study.

Life Sciences Outreach Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA:
The Life Sciences Outreach Program at Harvard University is committed to enhancing high school biology education. Go to:
Teacher Materials, Evolution. Resources developed for classroom use by high school biology teachers.
Retrieved from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

Y. Liu et al. (2025): Artificial Intelligence in Paleobotany and Palynology. In PDF, Geological Journal See likewise here.
Note table 1: Development of artificial intelligence in palynology studies from the 1980s to 2025.
"... The integration of AI, encompassing expert systems, neural networks, support vector machines, and other machine learning algorithms, has significantly automated a variety of paleontological research workflows. The application of AI in paleobotany involves multiple aspects such as image classification, image segmentation and prediction ..."

M. Rigo et al. (2024): Unveiling a new oceanic anoxic event at the Norian/Rhaetian boundary (Late Triassic). Open access, Scientific reports, 14. See here as well.
"... The latest Triassic was characterised by protracted biotic extinctions concluding in the End-Triassic Extinction (~200 Ma) and a global carbon cycle perturbation. The onset of declining diversity is closely related to reducing conditions that spread globally from upper Sevatian (uppermost Norian) to across the Norian-Rhaetian boundary, likely triggered by unusually high volcanic activity ..."

Z. Wei et al. (2025): Resolving the stasis-dynamism paradox: Genome evolution in tree ferns. Open access, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 42.
"... Our findings redefine evolutionary stasis as a dynamic equilibrium, sustained by regulatory plasticity and localized genomic innovation within a conserved morphological framework. This study offers a novel genomic perspective on the long-term persistence and evolution of ancient plant lineages ..."

! F.E. Charles et al. (2025): The influence of changing fire regimes on specialized plant�animal interactions. Open access, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 380: 20230448.
Note figure 1: Plant and animal morphological, behavioural and reproductive traits involved in specialized plant�animal interactions in fire-prone ecosystems.
"... In this review, we identified mutualistic (pollination, seed dispersal and food provision), commensal (habitat provision) and antagonistic (seed predation, herbivory and parasitism) plant�animal interactions from fire-prone ecosystems
[...] Our synthesis reveals how fire regime changes impact fire-dependent specialist plant�animal interactions and potentially drive eco-evolutionary dynamics in fire-prone ecosystems globally ..."

! N.S. Heckeberg et al. (2025): Practical guide and review of fossil tip-dating in phylogenetics. Open access, Systematic Biology.
"... we provide an extensive review and overview of methods and models for phylogenetic tip-dating analyses with fossils.
[...] We start with a survey of all published phylogenetic tip-dating studies to date, showing common data and modeling choices as well as trends toward new approaches. Then, we walk readers through sections of molecular evolution, morphological evolution ..."