Fossil evidence from South America for the diversification of Cunoniaceae by the earliest Palaeocene.

ABSTRACT:

Background and aims

Cunoniaceae are woody plants with a distribution that suggests a complex history of Gondwanan vicariance, long-distance dispersal, diversification and extinction. Only four out of ~27 genera in Cunoniaceae are native to South America today, but the discovery of extinct species from Argentine Patagonia is providing new information about the history of this family in South America.

Methods

We describe fossil flowers collected from early Danian (early Palaeocene, ~64 Mya) deposits of the Salamanca Formation. We compare them with similar flowers from extant and extinct species using published literature and herbarium specimens. We used simultaneous analysis of morphology and available chloroplast DNA sequences (trnL-F, rbcL, matK, trnH-psbA) to determine the

SUBMITTER: Jud NA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7872129 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature