Fossilized leaf shapes revealed the existence of forests in Antarctica 58 million years ago

According to a report released yesterday, Fossilized leaf forms collected on Seymour Island, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, provided evidence of the existence of vast forests at these latitudes during the Paleocene, about 58 million years ago.

These engravings, preserved in fine-grained sandstones and siltstones, are the best preserved flora of the Paleocene Antarctic Peninsula, according to Anne-Marie P. Tosolini, University of Leeds, and leader of the discovery team, who presented the results in Review of paleobotany and palynology.

They show significant diversity in their architecture in terms of shape, size, leaf vein patterns, despite growing in the polar region., where low light angles are encountered in winter, the agency reported DPA.

The fossils record a much greater floral diversity than that previously known from the forests of the Antarctic Paleocene, unlike previous fossil wood records, and represent a cool to warm temperate zone with mixed coniferous forests and evergreen and green forests. deciduous leaves.

Although there are no comparable modern species that help to understand the ecology of these Antarctic forests, the closest that can be found today are the Patagonian forests of South America.

These modern “Valdivian” forests are characterized by “South Beech(Nothofagus) and other leaves with edges with tooth margins such as Cunoniaceae, which includes Tasmanian leather wood, and Proteaceae (Lomatia tree), so the diversity of fringed or smooth-edged leaves in Paleocene forests was unexpected.

With curiosity, the Paleocene fossil forests on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula are markedly different from those found on the western side.

The results provided information on the diversity and ecology of the ancient forests that grew in Antarctica, as well as local and climatic influences. when the Earth experienced warmer temperatures before the planet cooled and the polar caps developed, the study’s authors said.

Many groups of plants considered unique to Australia, for example, have been produced in South America, such as eucalyptus.

Gondwana floral remains, such as southern flowering beeches (Nothofagus), large kauri and bunya type conifers (Araucariaceae), and plum pines (Podocarpaceae), are just a few of the groups found in temperate forests. cold and hot that grow in Tasmania, Victoria, Southeast Australia, New Zealand and Latin American Patagonia.

In June of last year, also on the white continent, Chilean scientists confirmed the discovery of the fossil of a 66 million-year-old giant egg, belonging to a marine reptile that roamed these expanses with dinosaurs.

The unusual specimen with soft sides, roughly the size and shape of a deflated basketball, this is the second largest egg ever discovered, behind the now extinct “elephant bird” which inhabited Madagascar until the 18th century.

Nail Joint expedition of scientists from the University of Chile and the Natural History Museum he found it on Seymour Island in Antarctica in 2011. It took more than eight years of research. Initially puzzled, investigators nicknamed him “The Thing” after John Carpenter’s 1982 film.

Nearly a decade later, scientists from both institutions and the University of Texas at Austin determined that the 11-inch egg likely belonged to a group of marine reptiles known as mosasaurs, related large predators. to forked-tongue lizards such as dragons. Komodo and snakes.

Scientists believe the specimen lived there 66 million years, towards the end of the Cretaceous period, just before the mass extinction that ended the age of the dinosaurs.

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