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).

! M.P. D'Antonio (2025): Convergent evolution of the developmental anatomy of leaf abscission: evidence from the arboreous lycopsid Sigillaria. Free access, Annals of Botany. ttps://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaf188.
"... we investigate using microscopy permineralized leaf cushions of the arboreous lycopsid Sigillaria approximata with and without articulated leaves
[...] Despite the similarities between leaf abscission in Lepidodendrales and leaf abscission in extant euphyllophytes, these represent distantly related plant groups separated in time by 300 million years ..."

ScienceDirect:
Paleobotany.
This website is created by ScienceDirect using heuristic and machine-learning approaches to extract relevant information.

! H. Sanei et al. (2024): Assessing biochar's permanence: An inertinite benchmark. Free access, International Journal of Coal Geology, 281.
"... This study applies the well-established optical and compositional characteristics of inertinite maceral, long defined by organic petrology and geochemistry disciplines, as a benchmark of the geological permanence for biochar. The well-calibrated and standardized tools commonly used by geologists for quantifying the level of organic carbon evolution have been re-introduced as new methods for measuring the degree of carbonization with respect to the inertinite benchmark ..."

V.A. Korasidis and B.E. Wagstaff (2025): Cool-temperate riparian floras in the Early Cretaceous rift valley of Victoria, Australia. Open access, Alcheringa. https://doi.org/10.1080/03115518.2025.2489614.
Note figure 14: Reconstruction of cool-temperate rainforest and fluvial environments in southeast Australian during the late Albian.
"... we studied 291 palynological samples from 48 sites in the Otway and Gippsland basins. Podocarpaceae represent the major component of the open canopy forests ..."

Climatic Change
Climatic Change is dedicated to the totality of the problem of climatic variability and change - its descriptions, causes, implications and interactions among these.

! J.W. Clark and P.C.J. Donoghue (2025): Uncertainty in the timing of diversification of flowering plants rests with equivocal interpretation of their fossil record. R. Soc. Open Sci., 12: 242158. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242158. See likewise here.
"... We show that the disagreement between molecular and palaeobotanical estimates is an artefact of interpretations of the fossil record
[...] Attention should be refocused on the history of stem-angiosperms in which the body plan of this most successful lineage of land plants was assembled ...

D. Quiroz-Cabascango et al. (2025): Earliest Jurassic plant assemblages from Sweden reveal a low-diversity ginkgoalean and cheirolepid flora dominating the post-extinction landscape. Free access, Annals of Botany. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcaf143.
Note figure 9A: Centimetre-scale charcoalified wood fragments in feldspathic sandstone.
"The low-diversity post-extinction recovery forests of the earliest Jurassic were dominated by ginkgoopsids, cheirolepid conifers and ferns, growing under seasonal mesothermal conditions. Dispersed charcoal indicates wildfires were present in the landscape at this time ..."

S.D. Burgess and B.A. Black (2025): The Anatomy and Lethality of the Siberian Traps Large Igneous Province. Free access, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science, 53: 567�945.
"... This review provides a summary of recent advances and key questions regarding the Siberian Traps in an effort to illuminate what combination of factors made the Siberian Traps a uniquely deadly LIP ..."

S. Pla-Pueyo and E.H. Gierlowski-Kordesch (2025): Wetlands as environments of early human occupation: A new classification for freshwater palaeowetlands. Open access, The Depositional Record. DOI: 10.1002/dep2.327.
"... A new classification for inland freshwater palaeowetlands, with a focus on carbonate wetlands, is proposed here, recognising key features that an be preserved in the fossil record ..."

D.M. Njoroge et al. (2025): The effects of invertebrates on wood decomposition across the world. In PDF, Biological Reviews, 100: 158-171. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.13134.
See likewise here.
"... we investigated what drives the invertebrate effect on wood decomposition worldwide. Globally, we found wood decomposition rates were on average approximately 40% higher when invertebrates were present compared to when they were excluded. This effect was most pronounced in the tropics, owing mainly to the activities of termites ..."

! E. Mujal et al. (2025): Triassic terrestrial tetrapod faunas of the Central European Basin, their stratigraphical distribution, and their palaeoenvironments. Free access, Earth-Science Reviews, 264.
! Note figure 1: Palaeogeography of the Triassic of Pangaea and the Central European Basin (CEB), and stratigraphy of the German Triassic.
"... A review of the fossil evidence permits the recognition of new patterns of diversity for various clades during the recovery period following the end-Permian mass extinction
[...] the CEB [Central European Basin] provides an excellent record for studying the evolution of Triassic terrestrial tetrapod faunas along with environmental changes over much of that period ..."

! S. Magallón et al. (2025): A metacalibrated time-tree documents the early rise of flowering plant phylogenetic diversity. Free access, New Phytologist, 207: 249-479.
Note figure 1: Molecular and fossil-based estimates of angiosperm age.
"... A large number of fossil-derived calibrations and a confidence interval on angiosperm age have been combined in relaxed clock analyses to provide a time-frame of angiosperm evolution. The maximum age of the onset of diversification of angiosperms into their living diversity has been calculated with high confidence to lie in the Early Cretaceous ..."