Green Group discussion

This beautiful specimen of a flower encased in amber, is the equivalent of a coal-fossilised fern.

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-million...

"Oregon State University researchers have identified a spectacular new genus and species of flower from the mid-Cretaceous period, a male specimen whose sunburst-like reach for the heavens was frozen in time by Burmese amber.


"This isn't quite a Christmas flower but it is a beauty, especially considering it was part of a forest that existed 100 million years ago," said George Poinar Jr., professor emeritus in the OSU College of Science."

An online friend Elton Charles Wright tells me of a professor lecturing in geology and petrified trees.

"Lecture section includes Ginkgo Petrified Forest... the Vantage logs.
Plant Fossils in the Pacific Northwest... has the palm leaves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUnfd...

Eastern Washington near Vantage has petrified logs from a large number of species .... a story involving basalt and a huge lake... some palm frond fossils are just north of where he teaches from 56 million hot, or PETM when alligators were in the Arctic ocean. https://www.nickzentner.com/ if you are curious. The leaves in that formation are impressive, he includes video footage, maps and locations of the stuff he teaches.... a thousand people from around to world showed up for the livestream for the Geology 101 class he is starting to teach at CWU this quarter. A few more than the 25 students the class is aimed at."

Elton is a tree lover too and I am delighted to get his recommendation. I'll be looking up these videos as soon as I get a chance.

""The spectacular fossil plants found in China are becoming renowned as the plant equivalent of Pompeii. Thanks to this slice of life preserved in volcanic ash, we were able to reconstruct a new species of Noeggerathiales that finally settles the group's affinity and evolutionary importance.

"The fate of the Noeggerathiales is a stark reminder of what can happen when even very advanced life forms are faced with rapid environmental change.""

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-pompeii...

More information: Jun Wang el al., "Ancient noeggerathialean reveals the seed plant sister group diversified alongside the primary seed plant radiation," PNAS (2021). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.201...
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by University of Birmingham

"A "hidden cradle of plant evolution" has been uncovered in Jordan. In Permian sedimentary rocks exposed along the east coast of the Dead Sea, a team led by palaeobotanists from the University of Münster discovered well-preserved fossils of plant groups bearing characteristics typical of younger periods of Earth history. The Permian began some 300 million years ago and ended around 250 million years ago.

The newly recovered fossils represent the earliest records of three major plant groups and reveal them to be much older than previously thought. Perhaps the most important finds are fossil twigs of the Podocarpaceae—today the second-largest family of conifers—making them the oldest fossil record of any living conifer family. Researchers also found leaves and reproductive organs of Corystospermaceae, a group of seed plants that went extinct some 150 million years ago, as well as remains of Bennettitales, a peculiar lineage of extinct seed plants with flower-like reproductive organs."

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-earlies...

More information: Patrick Blomenkemper et al. A hidden cradle of plant evolution in Permian tropical lowlands, Science (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau4061
Journal information: Science

"A discovery of well-preserved fossil plants by paleontologists from the United States, China, Japan, Russia and Mongolia has allowed researchers to identify a distant relative of the living plant Ginkgo biloba.

The find helps scientists better understand the evolution and diversity of ancient seed plants. The fossils, from the species Umaltolepis mongoliensis, date back to the early Cretaceous Period (some 100-125 million years ago). Scientists discovered the fossils in ancient peat deposits at the Tevshiin Govi mine in the steppes of central Mongolia. "

https://phys.org/news/2017-03-paleont...

More information: Fabiany Herrera et al. The presumed ginkgophytehas seed-bearing structures resembling those of Peltaspermales and Umkomasiales, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1621409114
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by National Science Foundation

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-sixty-m...

"It's rare for soft tissues like fruits to be preserved as fossils, so scientists' understanding of ancient fruits often comes from the seeds, which are more likely to fossilize. The earliest known grape seed fossils were found in India and are 66 million years old. It's not a coincidence that grapes appeared in the fossil record 66 million years ago—that's around when a huge asteroid hit the Earth, triggering a massive extinction that altered the course of life on the planet.

"We always think about the animals, the dinosaurs, because they were the biggest things to be affected, but the extinction event had a huge impact on plants too," says Herrera. "The forest reset itself, in a way that changed the composition of the plants."

Herrera and his colleagues hypothesize that the disappearance of the dinosaurs might have helped alter the forests. "Large animals, such as dinosaurs, are known to alter their surrounding ecosystems. We think that if there were large dinosaurs roaming through the forest, they were likely knocking down trees, effectively maintaining forests more open than they are today," says Mónica Carvalho, a co-author of the paper and assistant curator at the University of Michigan's Museum of Paleontology.

But without large dinosaurs to prune them, some tropical forests, including those in South America, became more crowded, with layers of trees forming an understory and a canopy.

These new, dense forests provided an opportunity. "In the fossil record, we start to see more plants that use vines to climb up trees, like grapes, around this time," says Herrera. The diversification of birds and mammals in the years following the mass extinction may have also aided grapes by spreading their seeds.
...

"But in 2022, Herrera and his co-author Mónica Carvalho were conducting fieldwork in the Colombian Andes when a fossil caught Carvalho's eye. "She looked at me and said, 'Fabiany, a grape!' And then I looked at it, I was like, 'Oh my God.' It was so exciting," recalls Herrera. The fossil was in a 60-million-year-old rock, making it not only the first South American grape fossil, but among the world's oldest grape fossils as well.
...

"The team conducted further fieldwork in South and Central America, and in the Nature Plants paper, Herrera and his co-authors ultimately described nine new species of fossil grapes from Colombia, Panama, and Perú, spanning from 60 to 19 million years old. These fossilized seeds not only tell the story of grapes' spread across the Western Hemisphere, but also of the many extinctions and dispersals the grape family has undergone.

The fossils are only distant relatives of the grapes native to the Western Hemisphere and a few, like the two species of Leea are only found in the Eastern Hemisphere today. Their places within the grape family tree indicate that their evolutionary journey has been a tumultuous one."

More information: Cenozoic seeds of Vitaceae reveal a deep history of extinction and dispersal in the Neotropics, Nature Plants (2024).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4147...
Journal information: Nature Plants
Provided by Field Museum

A fossilised tropical forest has been unearthed in Tasmania.

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-tropica...

"This study revealed the amazing diversity of Tasmania's fossilized forest. These plants tell the story of big changes in climate and the shifting tectonic plates over millions of years," Dr. Slodownik said.

"Through this research, my team and I have continued the University of Adelaide's history of being at the forefront of paleobotanical research, contributing crucial insights into plant evolution and the dynamics of our planet in deep time.""

More information: Miriam A. Slodownik, The non‐flowering plants of a near‐polar forest in East Gondwana, Tasmania, Australia, during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum, American Journal of Botany (2024).
https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...
Journal information: American Journal of Botany

Provided by University of Adelaide