Fossil evidence reveals how plants responded to cooling during the Cretaceous-Paleogene transition.

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ID: 44331
2019
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Abstract
Around the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, an obvious global cooling occurred, which resulted in dramatic changes in terrestrial ecosystems and the evolutionary trends of numerous organisms. However, how plant lineages responded to the cooling has remained unknown until now. Between ca. 70-60 Ma Mesocyparis McIver & Basinger (Cupressaceae), an extinct conifer genus, was distributed from eastern Asia to western North America and provides an excellent opportunity to solve this riddle.Here we report a new species, Mesocyparis sinica from the early Paleocene of Jiayin, Heilongjiang, northeastern China. By integrating lines of evidence from phylogeny and comparative morphology of Mesocyparis, we found that during ca.70-60 Ma, the size of seed cone of Mesocyparis more than doubled, probably driven by the cooling during the K-Pg transition, which might be an effective adaptation for seed dispersal by animals. More importantly, we discovered that the northern limit of this genus, as well as those of two other arboreal taxa Metasequoia Miki ex Hu et Cheng (gymnosperm) and Nordenskioldia Heer (angiosperm), migrated ca.4-5° southward in paleolatitude during this time interval.Our results suggest that the cooling during the K-Pg transition may have been responsible for the increase in size of the seed cone of Mesocyparis and have driven the migration of plants southwards.
Reference Key
cui2019fossilbmc Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Cui, Yi-Ming;Wang, Wei;Ferguson, David K;Yang, Jian;Wang, Yu-Fei;
Journal BMC plant biology
Year 2019
DOI
10.1186/s12870-019-1980-y
URL
Keywords
climate change morphology adaptation fossil plant k-pg transition mesocyparis

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