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).

! Y. He et al. 2024): Opportunities and Challenges in Applying AI to Evolutionary Morphology Open access, Integrative Organismal Biology, 6. https://doi.org/10.1093/iob/obae036.
"... We introduce the main available AI techniques, categorizing them into 3 stages based on their order of appearance: (1) machine learning, (2) deep learning, and (3) the most recent advancements in large-scale models and multimodal learning. Next, we present case studies of existing approaches using AI for evolutionary morphology ..."

PICRYL (developed by GetArchive):
PICRYL is the largest media source for public domain images, scans, and documents. Go to:
! Paleobotany .

I. Sykorova, et al. (2005): Classification of huminite. PDF file, (ICCP System 1994) reprinted from International Journal of Coal Geology 62, p. 85-106.
See also here (Download website Indiana Geological Survey).
Retrieved from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

! J. Carrión et al. (2025): Plants in the shadows: Bridging the gap in paleoecology and paleoart. Free access, Earth-Science Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2025.105371.
"... we evaluate methodological frameworks for translating fragmentary data into coherent visual ecosystems
[...] Particular attention is given to recent botanical paleoart
[...] we present original reconstructions from the Iberian Peninsula ..."

Earth-Science Reviews (Elsevier).
Earth-Science Reviews publishes review articles dealing with all aspects of the Earth Sciences.

S.R. Ash (1976): The systematic position of Eoginkgoites. Free access, American Journal of Botany, 63: 1327-1331.
Investigation of the well-preserved specimens found in the Chinle Formation shows that the leaf has anastomosing venation, a marginal vein and paracytic (syndetocheilic) stomata. These characters indicate that the leaf is bennettitalean and Eoginkgoites is reassigned to the Bennettitales although its shape is perplexing. Eoginkgoites may be an important index fossil to the lower Upper Triassic (middle Carnian) rocks ..."

S. Maidment and R.J. Butler (2025): New frontiers in dinosaur exploration. Open access, Biol. Lett., 21: 20250045.
"... The potential for new dinosaur discoveries in India and Africa seems particularly high, while the Carnian, when dinosaurs probably originated, and the Middle Jurassic, when the major clades diversified, offer the best opportunities to make discoveries that will fundamentally change our understanding of dinosaur evolution ..."

M.C. Langer et al. (2009): The origin and early evolution of dinosaurs. In PDF, Biological Reviews, 84: 1-56. See here as well.
Note figure 11: Reconstruction of two dinosaur-bearing fossil assemblages of the South American Late Triassic.
"... The oldest unequivocal records of Dinosauria were unearthed from Late Triassic rocks (approximately 230 Ma) accumulated over extensional rift basins in southwestern Pangea
[...] dinosaurs did not gradually replace other terrestrial tetrapods over the Late Triassic. In fact, the radiation of the group comprises at least three landmark moments, separated by controversial (Carnian-Norian, Triassic-Jurassic) extinction events. These are mainly characterized by early diversification in Carnian times
[...] the oldest dinosaurs were geographically restricted to south Pangea, including rare ornithischians and more abundant basal members of the saurischian lineage, the group achieved a nearly global distribution by the latest Triassic ..."

K. El Mahboubi and F. Romani (2025): Non-seed plant research in the spotlight. Free access, Biology Open, 14.
Note figure 1: Model systems and available resources in non-seed plants.
"... researchers embracing the diversity of plants and using emerging and established model systems covering hornworts, mosses, liverworts, lycophytes and ferns
[...] developments reflect a broader shift in plant biology, where diverse model systems are essential for reconstructing the evolutionary history of plants ..."

EBSCO Knowledge Advantage (EBSCO Industries, Inc., one of the largest privately held and family-owned companies in the United States):
Paleobotany

C. Cleal (2025): Diversity of small-leafed equisetaleans in Late Carboniferous coal swamps of Euramerica. Free access, Journal of the Palaeontological Society of India. https://doi.org/10.1177/05529360251400.
"... A group of equisetalean shoots with distinctive small leaves occurs widely in the upper Bashkirian and lower Moscovian coal-bearing deposits of Euramerica. They have often been named Asterophyllites grandis and Asterophyllites charaeformis in the past, but the use of these names is illegitimate for these species. In this study, these shoots have been assigned to five fossil species: Asterophyllites delicatulus, Asterophyllites parvulus, Asterophyllites gracilis, Asterophyllites taylorianum, and Asterophyllites lubnensis ..."

! B. van de Schootbrugge et al. (2025): Continental-scale wildfires during end-Triassic greenhouse warming. In PDF. Paper published on a website (Scientific congresses, symposiums and conference proceedings). EGU General Assembly 2025. See here as well.
Note figure 1: Late Triassic paleogeography.
! Figure 3: Latest Triassic palynomorph Dark Zone in NW Europe.
"... the emission of an estimated 100,000 Gt of CO₂ during pulsed eruptions in the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province had dire consequences for the biosphere and resulted in the end-Triassic extinction
[...] we investigate this latest Triassic �dark zone�, using the Palynomorph Darkening Index (PDI) obtained from trilete fern spores
[...] The impact of continental-scale wildfires during the height of the end-Triassic mass-extinction suggests intense climate change exerting heat stress on vegetation as a major factor in the collapse of terrestrial ecosystems ..."

! 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 ..."

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 ..."