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).

Ian West, Southampton Oceanography Centre, School of Ocean and Earth Science, Southampton University:
The Fossil Forest, west of Lulworth Cove, Dorset, southern England.
This is a classic geological locality with the remains and moulds of late Jurassic or early Cretaceous coniferous trees rooted in a palaeosol, the Great Dirt Bed. Above the trees is stromatolitic limestone and over this the unusual Broken Beds, a limestone breccia that was originally evaporitic.

E.J. Spagnuolo et al. (2024): Reconstructing the Botanical Past: Art and Paleobotany. Free access, Plant Science Bulletin, 70. See also here.
Note figure 1: Representative examples of plant paleoart throughout history and modern plant-centered paleoart.

! J.B. Antcliffe and M.D. Brasier (2011): Fossils with little relief: using lasers to conserve, image, and analyze the Ediacara biota. In PDF, In: M. Laflamme et al. (eds.), Quantifying the Evolution of Early Life, Topics in Geobiology 36, 223 DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0680-4_9. See likewise here.
"... Taking laser scans of fossils is completely non-invasive, even unlike casting, the chemicals involved in which can damage delicate fossil surfaces. It is now being seen as a major new tool to aid in the preservation of critical fossil data ..."

S. Bober and T. Riehl (2024): Adding depth to line artwork by digital stippling�a step-by-step guide to the method. In PDF, Organisms Diversity & Evolution, 14. See also here.
"... Shading techniques, such as stippling�the application of dots to generate shade�are the methods of choice for simulating shade, structure, shape, and texture. In this paper, a step-by-step guide for digital stippling is presented ..."

! D. Kim et al. (2008): Feature-Guided Image Stippling. Computer Graphics Forum, 27: 1209�1216. See likewise here.
"... This paper presents an automatic method for producing stipple renderings from photographs [...] For effective depiction of image features, we introduce a novel dot placement algorithm which adapts stipple dots to the local shapes ..."

X. Zhao et al.(2025): Climate�carbon-cycle interactions and spatial heterogeneity of the late Triassic Carnian pluvial episode. Free access, Nature communications, 16. See likewise here.
Note figure 4: Simulated climate states before and during the Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE).
"... We find that the rapid CPE [Carnian Pluvial Episode] onset (~15.8 kyr) could have been the result of volcanism and subsequent surface carbon-cycle feedbacks
[...] The CPE hydrological cycle was typified by increased aridification in continental interiors and multiple precipitation centres at low-latitude eastern regions of Pangea and at the poles ..."

J. Fischer et al. (2012): Palaeoenvironments of the late Triassic Rhaetian Sea: Implications from oxygen and strontium isotopes of hybodont shark teeth. In PDF, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 353�355: 60�72. See also here.
Note figure 1: Palaeogeographic and structural overviewmap of the late Triassic Central European Basin.
Figure 7. Schematic palaeogeographic map of the Central European Basin illustrating successive freshening of the Rhaetian Sea from the gates to its eastern margins.

Michon Scott: Strange Science. The rocky road to modern Paleontology and Biology. This website is an eclectic collection of old illustrations and information about the history of palaeontology or biology. Superby done! See especially:
! Biographies of Palaeontologists.
! Timeline History of Palaeontology. Note the progress made in recent decades! Also worth checking out:
Goof Gallery. Curious missteps in biology and paleontology are featured here.

! C.F. Kunz et al. (2025): Functional genomic perspectives on plant terrestrialization. Free access, Trends in Genetics.
Note fig. 1: Genomic exploration of streptophyte algal diversity.
"... Recent phylogenomic work has revealed that the streptophyte algae are genetically diverse, often with splits more ancient than the clade of land plants
[...] Network analyses have pinpointed biological programs shared across 600 million years of streptophyte evolution
[...] Genomic exploration of streptophyte diversity is in full swing. The sequencing of genome data from key species across streptophyte algal lineages has set the stage for tapping into the diverse functions they encode ..."

Doug Soltis, Amber Tilley and Hongshan Wang, Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH), University of Florida:
Deep Time. A comprehensive phylogenetic tree of living and fossil angiosperms. Go to:
Virtual Fossil Collection. Reconstruction of Archaefructus sinensis, Androdecidua endressii.
These expired links are now available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

King Saud University (KSU), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:
Optical Microscopy. Powerpoint presentation.
Websites outdated. Links lead to versions archived by the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! M.S. Ignatov et al. (2024): How to Recognize Mosses from Extant Groups among Paleozoic and Mesozoic Fossils. Open access, Diversity, 16.
"... The present study provides new data on Paleozoic mosses of the order Protosphagnales
[...] A list of Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Eocene moss fossils suitable for age calibration in phylogenetic trees is provided ..."

M.R. Stoneman et al. (2024): Two-photon excitation fluorescence microspectroscopy protocols for examining fluorophores in fossil plants. Open access, Commun. Biol., 7. See likewise here.
"... In this work, we utilize two-photon fluorescence microspectroscopy to spatially and spectrally resolve the fluorescence emitted by amber-embedded plants, leaf compressions, and silicified wood. The advanced micro-spectroscope utilized, with its pixel-level spectral resolution and line-scan excitation capabilities, allows us to collect comprehensive excitation and emission spectra with high sensitivity and minimal laser damage to the specimens ..."

V. Baranyi et al. (2025): Vegetation and climate record across the Carnian Pluvial episode from the Transdanubian Range, Hungary, Western Tethys. Free aaccess, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 671.
Note figure 9: Schematic lithostratigraphic chart of the Carnian formations in the studied areas in the Western Tethys realm and Central European Basin with the correlation of marker palynological assemblages and ranges of selected taxa.
"... The quantitative and qualitative palynological data from three borehole successions provided insight into the Julian and early Tuvalian vegetation history of the study area
[...] The palynofloras point to aridification from later in the early Tuvalian, indicating the waning of the pluvial phase ..."

L. Li et al. (2020): Palaeovegetation and palaeoclimate changes across the Triassic�Jurassic transition in the Sichuan Basin, China. In PDF, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 556. See here as well.
"... Five palynological assemblages reveal significant ecosystem fluctuations across the Triassic�Jurassic transition. Our study indicates a lowland fern flora and a warm and humid climate in the Late Triassic (Norian to Rhaetian), interrupted by a cooler interval at the Norian�Rhaetian transition, and followed by a mixed mid-storey forest under cooler and drier condition in the latest Rhaetian. This is followed by a fern-dominated lowland vegetation and a warmer and drier climate during the Triassic�Jurassic transition, and a flora with abundant cheirolepid conifers in the Hettangian�Sinemurian ..."

! J.B. Doran and A.M.F. Tomescu (2025): On the origin of euphyllophyte roots � hypotheses from an Early Devonian Psilophyton. Free access, Annals of Botany, https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaf121.
"... Well preserved Early Devonian (earliest Emsian) material from the Val d�Amour Formation in New Brunswick (Canada) was freed from the rock matrix using acid. Over 2000 emergences from 28 randomly selected P. crenulatum axes were characterized qualitatively and quantitatively in terms of morphology and distribution ..."

TAPHOS 2011, Institute of Geosciences, University of Tübingen.
The programme (in PDF) can be downloaded here.
These expired links are now available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! B.C. Emerson and G.M. Hewitt (2005): Phylogeography. Free access, Current biology, 15.
"... Phylogeography [1] is a young and fast-growing field that analyses the geographical distribution of genealogical lineages.
[] Today, a range of DNA techniques, combined with new analytical methods and recent palaeoclimatic and geological studies are providing important insight into the distribution of genetic diversity around the globe, and how it evolved ..."

Eman Soubani (2007), Plant Ecology and Systematic Department, Lund University:
The phylogeography of plants in Europe (PDF file). Introductory literature.

Website outdated. The link is to a version archived by the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! R.E. Plotnick et al. (2025): Employment in paleontology: status and trends in the United States. Free access, Paleobiology, 1�11. https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2024.59.
"... we have assessed recent trends and current status of the supply of new paleontology doctorates and the number of available positions. Overall, employment trends are downward ..."

E.J. Spagnuolo et al. (2024): Reconstructing the Botanical Past: Art and Paleobotany. In PDF, Plant Science Bulletin, 70. See here as well.
"... we briefly review the history of paleobotanical art, discuss the challenges when accurately depicting plants in paleoreconstructions, and highlight recent works that reconcile isolated plant organs into scientifically accurate wholeplant and landscape-level reconstructions ..."