Paleotemperature proxies from leaf fossils reinterpreted in light of evolutionary history.

ABSTRACT: Present-day correlations between leaf physiognomic traits (shape and size) and climate are widely used to estimate paleoclimate using fossil floras. For example, leaf-margin analysis estimates paleotemperature using the modern relation of mean annual temperature (MAT) and the site-proportion of untoothed-leaf species (NT). This uniformitarian approach should provide accurate paleoclimate reconstructions under the core assumption that leaf-trait variation principally results from adaptive environmental convergence, and because variation is thus largely independent of phylogeny it should be constant through geologic time. Although much research acknowledges and investigates possible pitfalls in paleoclimate estimation based on leaf physiognomy, the core assumption has never been explicitly t

SUBMITTER: Little SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3008682 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature