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).

Q. Fu et al. (2024): Unique Jurassic ovaries shed a new light on the nature of carpels. Open access, Plants, 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13162239.
"... A recently raised hypothesis stated that a carpel is a composite organ derived from an ovule-bearing axis and a subtending and enclosing leaf
[...] we report a new fruit/ovary, Xenofructus dabuensis gen. et sp. nov, from the Middle Jurassic of Liaoning, China. Surprisingly, these Jurassic ovaries clearly demonstrate the existence of free central placentation in early angiosperms. It appears that this new fossil provides a new insight into the evolution of placentation in angiosperms ..."

Anna-Lena Anderberg, Department of Palaeobotany, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm:
Rhaetian and Jurassic plants of Scania. This database includes the Rhaetian and Jurassic plant fossils from Scania, southern Sweden, housed in the Stockholm collections.
Still available via Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

University of Oregon Eugene, OR.
! Electron Probe Micro Analysis Course Materials. This course (for Mineralogy, Petrology and Materials Science) is a laboratory course covering the theory and application of EPMA (electron probe micro analysis) and SEM (scanning electron microscopy) as an integrated and multi-disciplinary subject covering aspects of physics, chemistry, geology and statistics plus practical hands-on experience with the instruments themselves. See for example:
1 Introduction to the EPMA/SEM laboratory: An introduction to the technique followed by a short tour of the facilities, including discussion of lecture notes and suggested reading materials.
10 Statistics: The essential key to scientific analysis.
13 Digital Imaging (Lecture and Lab): Imaging and mapping: An overview of electron and x-ray imaging and mapping techniques.
Lecture notes, Powerpoint presentations.

S.P. Xie et al. (2009): Altitudinal variation in Ginkgo leaf characters: Clues to paleoelevation reconstruction. PDF file, Science in China Series D: Earth Sciences, 52: 2040-2046. See likewise here.
"... The results show that leaf area, petiole length, and stomatal parameters have no obvious linear relationship with altitude (...). The results also suggest that the differences in stomatal density and stomatal index between sun and shade leaves had more influence on paleoelevation reconstruction than that in other parameters ..."

C.T. Gee and M.M. Howell (2024): International Workshop on Fossilization. In PDF, Terra Nostra, DFG Research Unit FOR 2685 at the University of Bonn, Germany June 14-17, 2024.

American Journal of Botany.
The American Journal of Botany (AJB), published by the Botanical Society, is the Society�s flagship research journal.

F. Battista and C.L. Schultz (2024): Sampling and collector biases as taphonomic filters: an overview. Open access, Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 96. https://doi.org/10.1590/0001-3765202420231242. See also here (in PDF).
Note figure 1: Conceptual map of the factors determining biases in the fossil record and palaeontological collections.
Figure 2: Conceptual map of further anthropogenic biases that lead to the loss, even definitive, of taphonomic information and consequent biased results.

Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO:
Web-based instruction. Annotated links to information on using the web to teach. Go to:
CzPaleobotany. See especially: Cenozoic Elevation of the Rocky Mountains, Paleobotanical Methods. About fossil classification (nearest living relative, physiognomy and CLAMP) and climate and elevation analysis.
These expired links are now available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! C.C. Loron et al. (2025): Prototaxites was an extinct lineage of multicellular terrestrial eukaryotes bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.14.643340.
"... We report that Prototaxites taiti was the largest organism in the Rhynie ecosystem and its anatomy was fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi. Furthermore, our molecular composition analysis indicates that cell walls of P. taiti include aliphatic, aromatic, and phenolic components most similar to fossilisation products of lignin, but no fossilisation products characteristic of chitin or chitosan, which are diagnostic of all groups of extant and extinct fungi
[...] Prototaxites was not a fungus ..."

! S. Trümper et al. (2023): Decoding the drivers of deep-time wetland biodiversity: insights from an early Permian tropical lake ecosystem. Open access, Palaeontology, doi: 10.1111/pala.12652.
Note figure 17: 1 7 . Reconstruction of the Manebach Lake ecosystem.
"... We reconstruct the trophic structure and age of the early Permian Manebach Lake ecosystem, Germany
[...] The results indicate woody-debrisbearing lake littorals devoid of semi-aquatic and aquatic plants as places suitable for stromatolites to grow, underpin the model of declining freshwater-shark diversity in most Permian Variscan basins, demonstrate fish/amphibian ratios in limnic assemblages ..."

! D. Chakrabarty (2018): Anthropocene time. Open access, History and Theory, 57: 5-32.
"... this article proceeds to discuss the differences between human-historical time and the time of geology as they relate to the concept of the Anthropocene ..."

J.E. Francis (1983): The dominant conifer of the Jurassic Purbeck formation, England.In PDF, Palaeontology, 26.
Note figure 3: Reconstruction of the dominant Purbeck conifer.
This expired link is still available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley (with support provided by the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute):
Understanding Evolution. Understanding Evolution is a non-commercial, education website, teaching the science and history of evolutionary biology. Go to:
History of life on Earth. Topics are "From soup to cells - The origin of life", "Evolution and the fossil record", "Deep Time" (an interactive timeline), etc.
Still available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

D.M. Jarzen, Florida Museum of Natural History: Paleobotany Collection Policies.
Website saved by the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

John Horgan, Scientific American: Life, Life Everywhere.
This expired link is still available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! J.E.A. Marshall et al. (2025): Terrestrial palaeoclimate, mercury, atmospheric CO₂ and land plants through the Late Devonian mass extinction. Free access, Journal of the Geological Society, 182.
"... a highly expanded terrestrial section from East Greenland is reported, which includes records of palaeoenvironment, palaeoclimate, carbon isotopes from plant debris, sedimentary mercury and plant spores
[...] The Heintzbjerg section is the first record from a terrestrial F-F [Frasnian�Famennian] Late Devonian mass extinction ..."

M.J. Tyler et al. (2023): Calamities causing loss of museum collections: a historical and global perspective on museum disasters. In PDF, Zootaxa, 5230: 153�178. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5230.2.2. Note here as well.
"... We review the loss or damage of museum collections globally
[...] The significance of the loss of type material would be ameliorated if, when there are numerous paratypes or syntypes, members of a type series were distributed among several institutions. This is currently common practice but historically this was not always the case and might not be possible if only a single holotype is available ..."

! A.M. Gurnell and W. Bertoldi (2024): Plants and river morphodynamics: the emergence of fluvial biogeomorphology. Open access, River Research and Applications, 40: 875-1150.
"... we present an annotated bibliographic overview of the development of fluvial biogeomorphology, whereby the text describes broad trends but is supported by tables of citations that can deliver greater detail ..."

! L. Liu et al. (2025): Ordovician marine Charophyceae and insights into land plant derivations. In PDF, Nature Plants. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02003-y.
See here as well.
Note figure 4: Morphological and palaeoecological reconstructions of Tarimochara miraclensis gen. et sp. nov.
Figure 6: Outline of the early Palaeozoic record of streptophyte algae and embryophytes.
"... This discovery demonstrates that at least some species of Charophyceae inhabited shallow normal marine environments at that time. Moreover, these early Charophyceae show that some key morphological innovations associated with an evolutionary transition between streptophyte algae and land plants had occurred before the early Katian ..."

D.G. Miralles et al. (2025): Vegetation�climate feedbacks across scales. Open access, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1544.
Note figure 2: Interaction between vegetation and climate trends and extremes.
"... Our goal is to highlight the state of science and review recent studies that may help advance our collective understanding of vegetation feedbacks and the role they play in climate ..."

! G.E. Mustoe (2025): Mineralization of Fossil Wood with Macrocrystalline Quartz: A Microscopic Investigation. Open access, Minerals, 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/min15030225.
"... there are only a few principal requirements. Dissolved Si concentration need to be at saturation level, and pH, Eh, and temperature parameters must be suitable for silica precipitation. The precipitation rate must be slow enough to allow the development of the well-ordered lattices necessary for the growth of quartz crystals. Macroscopic crystal growth requires sufficient open space for the formation of individual terminated shapes. These spaces can be related to anatomical features (e.g., vessels in angiosperm wood) or structural defects (e.g., fractures or rot pockets). When wood petrifaction has occurred in series of episodes ..."