#Paleobotany This #FossilFriday is dedicated to the Famennian fern-like plant Rhacophyton, a striking example of how reconstructing whole plants from fragmentary individuals remains challenging, even with thousands of specimens. Unraveling its architecture is also at the heart of my ongoing research
M. Krings, C. Harper & I are organizing a symposium for early career researchers:
-👤students to 2 years post PhD
-🌿 any #paleobotany or #palynology subject
- 💶 awards for the 3 best talks
We hope to gather a diversity of subjects & presenters. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions!
📣📣 The 12th European Paleobotany and Palynology Congress will take place September 20-24 in Münster 🇩🇪 🌿⛏️ Abstract submission will be opened from mid-April to May 31. All the information is now online here: www.uni-muenster.de/GeoPalaeonto...
#paleobotany #palynology #palaeobotany
Searching for the people that study fossil plants? Here's a starter pack!
Let me know if you should be included here!!!
#paleobotany #palaeobotany
go.bsky.app/B7Y3ja7
A Postdoctoral Research Fellowship on Mesozoic #Paleobotany and Ecophysiology is available at the University of Nottingham with Barry Lomax. jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...
#EBRAHIM #ZOLFAGHARI
multi-search-tag-explorer.headlines-world.com/advanced-sea...
2026 #KOLKATA #KNIGHT #RIDERS #SEASON
semantic-search.headlines-world.com/advanced-sea...
2026 IN #PALEOBOTANY
allgraph.ro/advanced-sea...
aepiot.ro
A research fellow post combining MESOZOIC PALAEOBOTANY and plant ecophysiology here at Nottingham with Barry Lomax. Fixed term to March 2029.
Please spread the word!
jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...
#paleobotany #plantscijobs 🌍⚒️🌱🧪🔬
A scientific poster about a collection from an understudied lagerstätte framed by stylized art of some of its flora like an illuminated manuscript.
Related to this morning's musings, this is the last scientific poster I ever did. It was an attempt to get the word out about an amazing collection that someone else needed to study because I was leaving the field.
#paleobotany #paleontology #MazonCreek
View of Carapace Nunatak from an helicopter. It is an isolated mountain peak rising above the polar icesheet
View of a fossil branch in the field and of a thin-section showing growth rings in the wood
Sometimes you go really far to find fossils that are way too young for your taste and partly rotten...but still very interesting! Here's one example, an early Jurassic conifer branch from Carapace Nunatak, Antarctica 🌲⛏️🇦🇶. Happy #FossilFriday! #paleobotany
OA paper from 2023 doi.org/10.3897/fr.2...
This is kind of fun (if a little hard on the eyes, and not great for those with motion sickness): "First land plants, early Devonian.” Video by Paleobiome.
Image of simple green plants w yellow spore sacs & brown mosses by a pond. #Plants #SmallBeauties #Paleobotany
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4wI...
A cat lying down in his nice little cat tower next to a table with an opened publication with fossil plant photos, a pen, and a computer. A minute later, the cat will slap his human's arm one more time and throw the pen away to get her to move.
This is my catsistant. He finds #paleobotany utterly boring. His job for the last 15 years has been to slap me while I write to encourage me to go do something else!
📖 Read the full paper here:
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/PKCWH...
If you’re interested and need a copy, feel free to reach out — I’ll be happy to share it!
#Paleobotany #FossilWood #Evolution
This fossil was shown to me and I really liked the delicate fan-like pattern.
Not sure what it is though — maybe a marine plant, or possibly a bryozoan colony.
The texture looks like a net or a leaf, and it made me stop and look twice.
#Fossils #Paleontology #Paleobotany #Travel
Ahhhhhh!!! These are gorgeous!!!!!
#paleobotany
Post Image
Fossil Friday #308: Beautiful things in small packages... #fossils #paleontology #MazonCreek #Pennsylvanian #carboniferous #paleobotany #seedfern
esconi.org/2026/03/fossil-friday-30...
A portrait page with a full restored branch onto the left. It has 6 palm like leaves at the end of one branch, hiding a cone, with a second mature cone below it. On the top right is a male floral organ, which is start shaped, and in the bottom right is a cut-way of the female cone showing its development.
I have another #paleobotany restoration guide for this #FossilFriday. This time, it's Kimuriella densifolia, a whole plant bennettitalean from the Late #Jurassic of Japan.
This plant is composed of three organ taxa: Williamsonia, Zamites, and Weltrichia.
#paleoart #sciart #botany
Polished section of a fossil fern showing the internal structure of the trunk. There is a thick mantle of small roots (R) surrounding the trunk. The vascular tissues of several leaf bases are visible. Paläontologisches Museum München public exhibit.
Of course the best fossils are always ✨Paleozoic plants✨ This is a polished section of a Psaronius tree fern from the early Permian (~290 million years) of the Czech Republic 🌿⛏️ We can see the root mantle (R) and the base of several leaves (arrows). Happy #FossilFriday & #FernFriday! #paleobotany
Pterocoma pennata, a comatulid ("feather star") from the Jurassic of Germany
Ginkgoites huttoni, a ginkgo from the Jurassic of England.
Cymatophlebia longialata, a dragonfly from the Jurassic of Germany
Pterodactylus antiquus, a pterosaur from the Jurassic of Germany.
Look at all these beautiful flattened Jurassic friends! ⛏️🤓 All from the Paläontologisches Museum München public exhibit -names in alt-text #fossil #paleontology #paleobotany
The paper refers to this as a "leafy shoot impression" of Cupressinocladus sp.
The paper refers to this as a "putative reproductive structure." It looks like a very bumpy type of pine cone in rock. It has a large dark section with rust-colors and light yellows in others.
From 2025: A new #conifer record from the late Aptian of La Paja Formation from Veléz, Santander ( #Colombia)
Hector Daniel Palma-Castro, Cristian David Benavides-Cabra, Fabiany Herrera #paleobotany #palaeobotany
acpa.botany.pl/A-new-conife...
The whole slice of fossil trunk. It's about 1.8 meters in diameter - taller than me. (There's also part of a fossil palm tree trunk on the right)
Close up of the fossil trunk showing the center on the left and the growth rings (there are ~250 rings in total)
I'm at the Paläontologisches Museum München this week, working on some long-overdue projects 🙃 They have cool #fossils in the exhibit hall but this is my favorite: a giant slice from the trunk of a redwood #tree (Sequoia sp. ) that was growing in the US ~16 million years ago. 🌲⛏️ #paleobotany
Gorgeously preserved stalks of horsetail criss-crossing over one another on a rock slab on display behind glass
A well-preserved conifer branches ending with circular cones at the end of those branches on the right. The stone slab is sepia-colored; the branches are a darker reddish-brown.
#FossilFriday
Horsetail (Asterophyllites sp.) 323 - 307 mya, #Kentucky
& conifer branch & cones (Sequoia affinis) 41 - 34 mya, #Montana
Yale Peabody Museum #paleobotany #palaeobotany
🔬 Takeaway: The evolution of vascular systems in early seed plants was far more complex than previously thought, involving multiple adaptive modifications and transitional stages. Ancient plant evolution was anything but simple. 🌱 (9/9)
👉https://doi.org/qr8r
#Paleobotany #PlantScience
Background image represents the so called "star-rings", vascular bundles in the pith transporting water to the apex and the leaf primordia. Within the parenchymatous tissues surrounding them, there are also the mucilage cavities (white globular areas).
🌿Check the newly published article “Shoot apical meristem and initial vascular development of a late Palaeozoic spermatophyte (order Medullosales)” in @annbot.bsky.social by Lydéric Portailler & Ludwig Luthardt. (1/9)
👉https://doi.org/qr8r
#Paleobotany #PlantEvolution #FossilPlants #Botany
A landscape page with a pale green background and two illustrations of Ginkgo on it. On the left is an inaccurate one with leaves coming directly from a branch. On the right is an accurate one with clusters extending from short shoots.
I, too, would like to have a go at the new Spinosaurus soon, but in the meantime:
Here's a slide from my recent talk, which covers the DOs and DON'Ts of restoring ginkgoes within palaeoart!
Enjoy! #Ginkgo #FossilFriday #paleobotany #paleoart #SciComm
From paper: Late Triassic leaf-mine fossil on Cladophlebis denticulata of the Momonoki Formation, Yamaguchi, Japan. (A) Specimen (MMHF11-00001a), on which mines on pinnules and chewing marks are marked with white arrowheads and yellow asterisks, respectively, and (B) its counterpart (MMHF11-00001b), at approximately the same scale. (C) Enlargement of pinna with three mines; orange arrowheads signify putative starting point (i.e., oviposition site) of leaf-mines; however, the starting point of the mine on the right is unseen. (D) Enlargement of two pinnules shows the transition of the frass trail, suggesting larval development while mining, and (E) its counterpart at the same scale. Arrowheads in orange and blue denote an oviposition site (os) and possible pupal chamber (pc), respectively.
2022: Oldest leaf mine trace fossil from East #Asia provides insight into ancient nutritional flow in a plant–herbivore interaction
#ichnology #paleobotany #palaeobotany
Yume Imada, Nozomu Oyama, Kenji Shinoda, Humio Takahashi & Hirokazu Yukawa
From paper: Co-occurrence of endophytic oviposition and Asteronomus maeandriformis in Autunia conferta. (a) Mass occurrence of oviposition scars, which likely housed unhatched eggs (NHMS Ap 37/5). (b) Sketch of (a) showing the distribution of the oviposition scars on the pinnule. (c–e) Oviposition scars with ovipositor slits (arrows) (NHMS Ap 37/5). (f) Oviposition and leaf mining on small Autunia conferta pinnules (MB.Pb.1979/0012). (g) Enlargement of the area in (f). Note the callus tissue surrounding the oviposition sites. (h) Leaf mines and oviposition scars on Autunia conferta (MB.Pb.1979/0014). (i) Irregularly distributed oviposition scars on Autunia conferta (MB.Pb.1979/0020).
From paper: Thin sections of Asteronomus maeandriformis in Autunia conferta from Crock, Thuringian Forest Basin, Germany. (a) Section through an Autunia conferta leaf (MB.Pb.1979/0188) with frass trail (box). The scrolled margins indicate the upper side of the pinnule. (b) Section through the frass trail in (a). Note the upper epidermis (arrow), which covers the tunnel. (c) Another example of a compressed tunnel in the upper parenchyma covered by the upper epidermis (arrow) (MB.Pb.1979/0179). (d) Transverse and longitudinal sections through endophytic frass trails in Autunia conferta (MB.Pb.1979/0188). (e, f) Longitudinal section through a frass trail (MB.Pb.1979/0069). Note the calcite-filled cracks and the thin calcite cover on the upper side of the leaves from shrinkage of the organic matter in (arrows in f).
Wow!
2025: Host-specific leaf-mining behaviour of holometabolous insect larvae in the early #Permian
#ichnology #paleobotany #palaeobotany
Michael Laaß, Ludwig Luthardt, Steffen Trümper, Angelika Leipner, Norbert Hauschke & Ronny Rößler
Ancient walnuts 🌰 tell a Silk Road story! Genome-wide data 🧬 from Tang Dynasty Xinjiang walnuts reveal a transitional genetic stage linking Central Asia and China in a new study published in Cell Reports.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
#MetagenomicsMonday #SPAAM #aDNA #ancientDNA #silkroad #paleobotany
small red vaguely bell-shaped flowers with translucent fused sepals of the species Florissantia quilchenensis face downwards towards the camera, the branch they're growing from is seen to the right while the leaves of the branch are behind the flowers. behind in the background is a blurry branch showing more flowers and leaves Florissantia quilchenensis is a species of Eocene, Canadian malvacean (mallow family) bisexual reproductive organ who's growth-form and whole-plant appearance is unknown. here I have reconstructed it as a tree similar to other plants in the subfamily Sterculioideae, of which it is nested in. it had an androgynophore with five petals fused into a corolla in alternation with the calyx, the style was longer than the stamens, there were five stamens that bifricated at their tips into two anthers giving it a total of ten anthers per flower, as mentioned previously the sepals of this plant were fused into the distinctive bell-shaped cup
at night after a brief shower of rain, an artificial light illuminates the branches of a tree showing very small pink flowers of the genus Lovellea, small blobs of water cling to the waxy cutiles of the leaves, another two blurry branches (though, without flowers) can be seen in the background Lovellea is a kind of small and basal laurale reproductive organ who's growth-form and whole-plant appearance is unknown. Here i have reconstructed it after a more basal condition with a singular flower to each leaf growing from the axillary bud. the flower was shaped like a radially symmetrical pear with an opening at the top in which small pollinators could crawl in for pollination, the ovaries surrounded by a thick layer of overlapping tepals
a kritosaurin hadrosaur has plucked a branch off of a legume tree that's growing fruit of the species Leguminocarpum olmensis, the branches themselves are partially in fruit and partially in flower still kritosaurin hadrosaurs are a group of "duck billed" dinosaurs from Mexico with tall robust nasals but no nasal crests like those found in saurolophines Leguminocarpum olmensis is a species of Late Cretaceous, Mexican fabacean (bean family) fruit of uncertain taxonomic affinities to other fabaceans, and who's growth-form and whole-plant appearance is unknown. here i have reconstructed it as a cercidoidean with racemose infloresence and alternate distichous bilobed leaves
tri-paired three follicles in the genus Sagaria are seen growing on a plant with two pink flowers below them, each internode grows from a three-lobed leaf's axillary bud. trichomes coat the entire plant, catching drops of water, a soft orange light glows behind the plant Sagaria is a genus of Albian, Italian ranunculacean (buttercup family) fruit who's growth-form and whole-plant appearance is unknown. here i have reconstructed its flowers as closer to buttercups with six overlapping petals forming a cup-like shape and many anthers in its centre. follicles are a kind of fruit that splits down a central seam when ripe to release its seeds
this week's #Paleostream was a Valentine's Day special where we drew fossil angiosperms! this week we drew Florissantia (i drew F. quilchenensis), Lovellea, Leguminocarpum olmensis, and Sagaria #paleobotany #palaeobotany #paleoart #botany #sciart
