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).

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 ..."

MSc Palaeobiology Students, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, (the author's name appears on the title page for each section):
Fossil Lagerstätten. A catalogue of sites of exceptional fossil preservation. Go to:
Santana Formation, Fauna and Flora (e.g. a Cheiroledpidiaceous conifer);
Mazon Creek, Fauna and Flora (Lepidodendron, Lepidostrobophyllum, Lepidophyllum, Calamites, Asterophyllites equisetiformis, Spenophyllum, Equisetites, Pecopteris, Asterotheca, Alethopteris, Diplothmema).
Retrieved from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

Stephen Caine, UK:
Links to Models of the Rhynie Chert Plants. Retrieved from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
Viewed on the Rhynie Chert Flora page, the Aberdeen University Geology Department web site, etc. Ventarura lyonii, from the Windyfied chert, Rhynie, Scotland (showing enlarge section of possible sporangial arrangement). See also (page hosted by the Rhynie chert Research Group, the University of Aberdeen):
The Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition in London 2004 (a Rhynie diorama). Some images taken of the exhibit, including a visit by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales (who takes notice of palaeobotany elsewhere?).

! 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 ..."

François Rosselet, Section des Sciences de la Terre, Lausanne, Switzerland:
Tethyan Plate Tectonic Home Page. Tethyan plate reconstructions and descriptions.
Retrieved from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

! 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 ..."

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 ..."

! 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.

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 ..."

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 ..."