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).

! A. Carta et al. (2024): The seed morphospace, a new contribution towards the multidimensional study of angiosperm sexual reproductive biology. In PDF, Annals of Botany, 134: 701�710. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcae099.
See likewise here.
Note figure 1: Morphological diversity of seeds and fruits.
Table 1: Key morphological traits used to construct the seed morphospace, their functional role and relevant data sources/references.
"... we present a roadmap to synthesize the diversity of seed forms in extant angiosperms, relying on the morphospace concept
[...] we outline challenges and future research directions, combining the morphospace with macroevolutionary comparative methods to underline the drivers that gave rise to the diversity of observed seed forms ..."

E. Schneebeli-Hermann et al. (2025): Resilient gymnosperms: reassessing floral dynamics at the permian�triassic extinction in Meishan. Open access, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 141.
"... To date, the comparison of the palynological data with the carbon isotope record, current lithostratigraphy, and U/Pb ages indicates that gymnosperm-dominated vegetation thrived during and after the Permian�Triassic extinction event in the continental area near Meishan ..."

! D. Peris et al. (2025): Evolutionary implications of a deep-time perspective on insect pollination. Open access, Biological Reviews. doi: 10.1111/brv.70008.
Note figure 2: Current understanding of insect pollinators in deep time ...
! Figure 3: Diversification of the insect orders with extant and/or extinct pollinator representatives.
"... Current palaeontological evidence indicates that pollinating insects were diverse and participated reproduction of different gymnosperm lineages long before their association with flowering plants
[...] we highlight how all the known insect orders with extant and/or extinct pollinator representatives radiated long before the evolution of flowering plants. We also illustrate the changing composition of the insect pollinator fauna through time
[...] Our conclusions show that the fossil record is fundamental to elucidating the origin and evolution of insect pollination ..."

F.H.D. Araujo et al. (2018): Reverse image search for scientific data within and beyond the visible spectrum. In PDF, Expert Systems with Applications, 109: 5-48. See here as well.
""... This paper introduces new strategies to enable fast searches and image ranking from large pictorial datasets with or without labels. The main contribution is the development of pyCBIR, a deep neural network software to search scientific images by content ..."

! W. Ding et al. (2025): The stepwise rise of angiosperm-dominated terrestrial ecosystems. In PDF, Biological Reviews. See here as well.
! Note figure 1: Stepwise evolution of angiosperms and angiosperm-dominated biomes in Earth history during the Cretaceous and Cenozoic.
"... we summarize, based on fossils and molecular evidence, when and how angiosperms came to diversify, dominate, and shape terrestrial ecosystems
[...] We highlight five major phases of angiosperm evolution that took place against a background of palaeogeography and climate changes ..."

R.B. Cooper et al. (2024): DeepDive: estimating global biodiversity patterns through time using deep learning. Open access, Nature Communications, 15. Note also here.
"... we develop an approach based on stochastic simulations of biodiversity and a deep learning model to infer richness at global or regional scales through time
[...] We apply our method on two empirical datasets of different taxonomic and temporal scope: the Permian-Triassic record of marine animals and the Cenozoic evolution of proboscideans. Our estimates provide a revised quantitative assessment of two mass extinctions in the marine record ..."

Google Image Search.
Upload an image from your computer, Drop the image into a search bar, Click �Search�.

Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Erwin Beck, Klaus Müller-Hohenstein (2005):
Plant Ecology.
Sample pages. Keywords for this textbook are e.g. autecology, ecophysiology, ecosystem ecology, plant ecology, synecology. Worth checking out:
Table of contents (PDF file).
4.1 Historic-Genetic Development of Phytocenoses and Their Dynamics (PDF file).
Websites are still available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! I.P. Montañez and C.J. Poulsen (2013): The Late Paleozoic ice age: an evolving paradigm. In PDF, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 41. See likewise here.
Note figure 1: Mollweide paleogeographic maps of (a) the Late Mississippian (340 Mya) early icehouse and (b) the Early Pennsylvanian (300 Mya) peak icehouse.
"... The late Paleozoic icehouse was the longest-lived ice age of the Phanerozoic
[...] This review summarizes evidence for the timing, extent, and behavior of continental ice on Pangea in addition to the climate and ecosystem response to repeated transitions between glacial and interglacial conditions ..."

L. Dugerdil et al. (2025): Functional Signatures of Surface Pollen and Vegetation Are Broadly Similar: Good News for Past Reconstructions of Vegetation. Open access, Journal of Biogeography, 52.
Note figure 2: Workflow followed in this study.
"... we use a trait-based approach to assess the consistency of functional signatures between pollen and plant assemblages
[...] This new approach is very promising and allows one to better understand why and how vegetation functional structures have changed through time ..."

G.R. Shi and J.B. Waterhouse (2010): Late Palaeozoic global changes affecting high-latitude environments and biotas: an introduction. In PDF, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 298: 1-16.
Still available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine. See here as well.
Note figure 3: A reconstruction of Late Permian world.
Figure 4 (A)�(C): Palaeogeographic evolution of the world from early Carboniferous to Late Permian.
"... This introductory paper is designed to provide a global context for the special issue, with a brief review of key late Palaeozoic global environmental changes (including: changes in global land-sea configurations, atmospheric chemistry, global climate regimes, global ocean circulation patterns and sea levels) and largescale biotic (biogeographic and evolutionary) responses, followed by a summary of what we see as unresolved scientific issues ..."

! L. Quevarec et al. (2024): Tracking the early events of photosymbiosis evolution. In PDF, Trends in Plant Science, 29. See likewise here.
"... Oxygenic photosynthesis evolved in cyanobacteria around 3.2 giga-annum (Ga) ago and was acquired by eukaryotes starting around 1.8 Ga ago by endosymbiosis
[...] we discuss the primary events leading to the establishment of photosymbiosis, and we present recent research suggesting that, in some cases, domestication occurred instead of symbiosis ..."

J.L. Blois et al. (2025): Paleobiogeographic insights gained from ecological niche models: progress and continued challenges Paleobiology, 51: 8�28. https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2024.16. See also here.
"... we explore the ways that ENMs [Ecological Niche Models] have been used to study the evolution and ecology of past biodiversity. While ENMs are commonly used to understand the dynamics of species and assemblages during more recent periods of Earth history (i.e., the last several million years), an increasing number of studies have extended ENMs deeper into the geologic past ..."

! Catalogue of Life (COL):
Catalogue of Life (COL) is a collaboration bringing together the effort and contributions of taxonomists and informaticians from around the world.

Computers & Geosciences
Computers & Geosciences publishes high impact, original research at the interface between Computer Sciences and Geosciences.

H. Peng et al. (2025): Refugium amidst ruins: Unearthing the lost flora that escaped the end- Permian mass extinction. Open access, Science Advances, 11.
Note figure 5: Artistic reconstruction of the terrestrial ecological landscape during, before, and after the end of the Permian mass extinction.
"... Our findings contradict the widely held belief that restoring terrestrial ecosystem functional diversity to pre-extinction levels would take millions of years. Our research indicates that moderate hydrological fluctuations throughout the crisis sustained this refugium, likely making it one of the sources for the rapid radiation of terrestrial life in the early Mesozoic ..."