Mastodawn

400 million #herbarium specimens, but how good is their #DNA? 🌿🧬 This study shows preservation depends on climate at collection and highlights their value for studying DNA decay over time.
https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giag026
#MetagenomicsMonday #SPAAM #aDNA #palaeobotany #museumscience #ancientDNA

The Inquisitive Biologist Feb 1

This week's #NewBooks at the library: I adopted damaged copies of The Princeton Field Guide to Mesozoic Plants (look out for a review in the near future) and David Attenborough's Life Trilogy Boxset.

#Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon #Paleobotany #Palaeobotany #Plants #Botany #NaturalHistory @bookstodon @princetonupress

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Annals of Botany Mar 27, 2025

🌿🏺This study lays the foundation for refining NW Europe's phytolith reference database. With more data, we can better reconstruct ancient environments and human-plant interactions. (7/7)

👉 https://doi.org/pdrp

#Palaeobotany #AoBpapers

Annals of Botany Mar 27, 2025

🎉 Good news! The paper ‘Phytoliths in dicotyledons occurring in Northwest Europe: establishing a baseline’ in @AnnBot by Rosalie Hermans and co-authors is now #free for a limited time 🧵(1/7)

👉 https://doi.org/pdrp

#Palaeobotany #Archaeology #AoBpapers

Dave J Mar 22, 2025

Bizarre #fossil may have been an entirely new type of #life. Chemical analysis suggests the 400-million-year-old fossil #Prototaxites was neither plant, animal or fungus – hinting at a mysterious life form that went extinct long ago. http://archive.today/2025.03.21-191932/https://www.newscientist.com/article/2473272-bizarre-fossil-may-have-been-an-entirely-new-type-of-life/ #science #palaeobotany #paleobotany #biology #botany #mycology #taxonomy

Victoria Stuart 🇨🇦 🏳️‍⚧️Mar 26, 2024

Estella Bergere Leopold (1927–2024), passionate environmentalist who traced changing ecosystems
The trailblazing palaeobotanist investigated how climate change affected Earth in the past — and firmly believed science should be used in its defence now.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00905-z

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estella_Leopold

#conservation #EstellaLeopold #environmentalists #ecosystems #palaeobotany #botany #science

Estella Bergere Leopold (1927–2024), passionate environmentalist who traced changing ecosystems

The trailblazing palaeobotanist investigated how climate change affected Earth in the past — and firmly believed science should be used in its defence now.

Tom Parker Jul 3, 2023

Rough scale diagrams of some of the largest #cycad and Nilssonia leaves from the #Jurassic. #fossils #illustration #scientificillustration #Palaeobotany

Julianne (Jules) Kiely May 11, 2023

A Forest Encounter.
This is a piece depicting a forest environment near the #Bahariya Delta. I wanted to produce a piece of #paleoart showing #Spinosaurus in a forest, away from water, as it's almost always shown in proximity to water. I also wanted to show just how massive some of the trees would have been; the massive Agathis in this drawing dwarfs even the largest sauropods of the Bahariya Formation (in this case Paralititan). #palaeobotany #palaeontology #botany #plants #sciart

Tom Parker Apr 21, 2023

These Triassic fossil cycads absolutely blow me away every time I see them.

#fossils #Palaeobotany #science #plants #cycads

Dr Alan R.T. Spencer Apr 13, 2023

New paper with colleagues detailing an exquisitely preserved #Jurassic tree from the Purbeck of England. In this we use traditional #palaeobotany methods, combined with 3D laser scanning, to investigate this +1000kg fossil. Resolving the architecture and affinity of the fossil tree. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23818107.2023.2197973

Free access (50 copies): https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MXB2CI2EIE26XFTVYFWI/full?target=10.1080/23818107.2023.2197973

3D models can be accessed here: https://zenodo.org/record/6839556 and https://skfb.ly/oFZsH

#Palaeontology #fossil #science #Newpaper

New evidence of the architecture and affinity of fossil trees from the Jurassic Purbeck Forest of southern England

We document the habit and affinity of the most complete Mesozoic Era tree to be excavated in the UK. The fossil was found in situ in a palaeosol of the Upper Jurassic Purbeck Group of southern Engl...

Taylor & Francis