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).

S.A. Smith and J.M. Beaulieu (2024): Ad fontes: divergence-time estimation and the age of angiosperms. Open access, New Phytologist.
"... When our results present a dramatically different view of life's history, such as in the case of plant life, it may be more reasonable to consider errors in our model or interpretation than to dismiss conflicting data outright. Like the iconoclasm of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, simplifying analyses and focusing on underlying biology may lead to a clearer understanding of the evidence ..."

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 10: 216-217.
August von Gutbier (1798-1866). In German.

Y.L. Qiu and B.D. Mishler (2024): Relationships Among the Bryophytes and Vascular Plants: A Case Study in Deep-Time Reconstruction. Open access, Diversity, 16. https://doi.org/10.3390/d16070426.
"... A tentative consensus, reached ten years ago, suggested that bryophytes are a paraphyletic group, with liverworts being sister to all other land plants and hornworts being sister to vascular plants
[...] A discussion is presented here on strengths and weaknesses of different types of characters (morphological traits, nucleotide sequences, and genome structural arrangements) and their suitability for resolving deep phylogenetic relationships ..."

C.C. Labandeira and R. Cenci (2024): Workshop: Insect-Plant Interaction Notes. In PDF, Conference: Ichnia 2024 - The 5^th International Congress on Ichnology, Florianópolis, Brazil.

! A.C. Scott (2024): The Anatomically preserved Early Carboniferous flora of Pettycur, Fife, Scotland. Open access, Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 135: 389�415.
"... At least 25 plant organ species are present representing more than 13 whole plant species
[...] It is shown also that a number of the plants may also be preserved as charcoal
[...] Of particular importance is the occurrence of true permineralised peats that provide evidence of the botanical composition of the earliest peat-forming mire at a time of rapid global change ..."

J. Smerdon et al. (2023): The historical development of large-scale paleoclimate field reconstructions over the Common Era. Open access, Reviews of Geophysics, 61. e2022RG000782. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022RG000782-
"... annually-resolved climate proxies, such as tree rings, ice cores, and corals, when used in concert with observational records, can provide information on how climate conditions have changed over decades to millennia. These proxies are also abundant enough over the last two millennia to create reconstructions in both space and time, or maps of climate conditions at seasonal or annual intervals. These kinds of reconstructions are called climate field reconstructions (CFRs) and we review their scientific history back to the 1970s when they were first attempted ..."

! Y. Pan et al. (2019): Applications of chemical imaging techniques in paleontology. Open access, National Science Review, 6: 1040�1053: https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwy107.
"... Chemical imaging techniques, based on a combination of microscopy and spectroscopy, are designed to analyse the composition and spatial distribution of heterogeneous chemical complexes within a sample. Over the last few decades, it has become an increasingly popular tool for characterizing trace elements, isotopic information and organic biomarkers (molecular biosignatures) found in fossils ..."

Diversity
Diversity is a peer-reviewed, open access journal on the science of biodiversity from molecules, genes, populations, and species, to ecosystems and is published monthly online by MDPI.

J. Louys (2012; ed.): Paleontology in Ecology and Conservation. In PDF, Springer Earth System Sciences, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-25038-5_3,
This expired link is now available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.
See also here. Note especially:
! Starting on PDF page 1: Chapter 1 Paleontology in Ecology and Conservation: An Introduction (by J. Louys).
! Starting on PDF page 23: Chapter 3 Ecology Needs a Paleontological Perspective (by J.Louys, D.M. Wilkinson, and L.C. Bishop).
! Starting on PDF page 39: Chapter 4 Reconciling Scale in Paleontological and Neontological Data: Dimensions of Time, Space, and Taxonomy (by J.B. Bennington and M.F.J. Aronson).

! P.K. Strother and W.A. Taylor (2024): A fossil record of spores before sporophytes. Open access, Diversity, 16. https://doi.org/10.3390/d16070428.
Note figure 3: Stratigraphic distribution of cryptospore categories and early trilete spores.

M. Boderau et al. (2024): Morphological and palaeoecological aspects of fossil insects unveiled by UV-A light. In PDF, MethodsX, 13. ff10.1016/j.mex.2024.102794ff. ffinsu-04625219ff.
Note likewise here.
"... we propose a user-friendly and simple methodology based on UV-light to study insect fossils
[...] Our approach allows the investigation of fossils using an affordable, compact, and portable UV-light source, along with a simple and replicable low-cost protocol ..."

! D.P. Gifford (1981): Taphonomy and Paleoecology: A Critical Review of Archaeology's Sister Disciplines. In PDF, Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 4: 365-438.
See here as well.
Note figure 8.1: Schematic representation of the states through which a fossil element passes and the processes that transfer it from one state to another.
"... taphonomy involves two distinct but necessarily related lines of investigation. The first is devoted to studying observable contemporary processes involved in this transition of organic remains from biosphere to lithosphere
[...] Properly pursued, taphonomy can provide paleoecologists with information about the spatial, temporal, and biological factors involved in the formation of fossil assemblages ..."

S.M. Holland et al. (2024): Stratigraphic paleobiology. In PDF, Paleobiology 1�18. https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2024.2
See here as well.
"... we present recent advances in six major areas of stratigraphic paleobiology, including critical tests in the Po Plain of Italy, mass extinctions and recoveries, contrasts of shallow-marine and nonmarine systems, the interrelationships of habitats and stratigraphic architecture, large-scale stratigraphic architecture, and the assembly of regional ecosystems ..."

! A.C. Scott (2024): Thirty Years of Progress in Our Understanding of the Nature and Influence of Fire in Carboniferous Ecosystems. In PDF, Fire, 7. 248. https://doi.org/10.3390/fire7070248.
See here as well.
Note figure 7: The interpretation of the Viséan East Kirkton environment highlighting the role of wildfire.
"... One of the basic problems was the fact that charcoal-like wood fragments, so often found in sedimentary rocks and in coals, were termed fusain and, in addition, many researchers could not envision wildfires in peat-forming systems. The advent of Scanning Electron Microscopy and studies on modern charcoals and fossil fusains demonstrated beyond doubt that wildfire residues may be recognized in rocks dating back to at least 350 million years ..."