First fossil-leaf floras from Brunei Darussalam show dipterocarp dominance in Borneo by the Pliocene.

ABSTRACT: The Malay Archipelago is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, but it suffers high extinction risks due to severe anthropogenic pressures. Paleobotanical knowledge provides baselines for the conservation of living analogs and improved understanding of vegetation, biogeography, and paleoenvironments through time. The Malesian bioregion is well studied palynologically, but there have been very few investigations of Cenozoic paleobotany (plant macrofossils) in a century or more. We report the first paleobotanical survey of Brunei Darussalam, a sultanate on the north coast of Borneo that still preserves the majority of its extraordinarily diverse, old-growth tropical rainforests. We discovered abundant compression floras dominated by angiosperm leaves at two sites of probable Pliocene a

SUBMITTER: Wilf P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8958975 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature