Borja Cascales-Miñana

• French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development

Lyginopteridalean fossil fronds found abundantly in deposits of the Pennsylvanian-age (late Carboniferous) coal swamps have historically been identified as Eusphenopteris neuropteroides. However, these fossils have been referred by Van Amerom to three distinct fossil-species: E. schumannii, E. neuropteroides and E. leonardii. The types of these thr...

The Early Devonian plant fossil record provides evidence of large vegetation turnover events in addition to rapid morphological and anatomical changes among vascular plants. The Ardenno-Rhenish Massif has historically yielded a vast number of these plant fossils allowing us to obtain a nearly unparalleled snapshot of Early Devonian vegetation. None...

The Nord‐Pas‐de‐Calais Coalfield is formed by an almost continuous succession of upper Carboniferous deposits, from which an extremely diverse macroflora has historically been described. Recent evidence has highlighted a clear pattern of changing species diversity, showing some differences from what is seen in other coalfields of Variscan Eurameric...

The Pragian-Emsian interval was a period of remarkable morphological and anatomical diversification among various early land plant groups. Nonetheless, evidence documenting this crucial event remains limited, especially given the scarcity of permineralized material, such as in the Ardenno-Rhenish region located on the southeastern shelf of Laurussi...

This communication aims to show the plant-insect interactions recently found from the medullosalean record of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Coal eld, France. This basin is located within the foreland belt of Variscan Euramerica. It has a Namurian-Westphalian sequence that has historically yielded a vast collection of macro oral adpressions, which inspired...

During recent years, different studies have focused on characterising plant diversities in the Carboniferous environments of the Variscan Foreland. One of these areas, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Coalfield, has a Namurian–Westphalian sequence that has historically yielded abundant evidence of vegetation change, but to date, little attention has been pai...

The Silurian-Devonian plant radiation was a critical development in the evolution of early terrestrial ecosystems. Characterizing the diversity dynamics of this radiation has been a focus of numerous studies. However, little is known about the impact of geological bias on our perception of this biodiversification. Here, we use a new, comprehensive...

The Silurian–Devonian plant radiation was an event triggered by the progressive colonization of subaerial habitats. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether this radiation was globally uniform or whether alternative diversification scenarios emerged depending on the geographical context. Here, we report on early land plant diversity patterns acros...

The Lower Devonian Klerf Formation is an exceptional Konservat-Lagerstätte, exposed at multiple sites in the Waxweiler region in the Eifel area, western Germany. It has been studied for its various fossils, mainly arthropods, fishes, plants, molluscs, brachiopods, and crinoids. At Waxweiler, the sediments are palaeoecologically interpreted as a pro...

This contribution reviews the evidence for terrestrial organisms during the Ordovician (microbial, land plant, fungal, animal) and for the nature of the terrestrial biota. The evidence regarding the origin and early diversification of land plants combines information from both fossils and living organisms. Extant plants can be utilised in: (i) phyl...

French Lower Devonian floras are rare, especially compared to certain other Western European countries. In this study, we reassess an assemblage collected in the 1930s in the Rebreuve quarry (Pas-de-Calais, northern France). We describe new features in several taxa and update taxonomic names from original descriptions. For instance, re-examination...

During the mid-Palaeozoic, vascular land plants (i.e., tracheophytes) underwent a great radiation that triggered the development of the land biosphere – the so-called Silurian–Devonian terrestrial revolution. However, little is known about how different plant groups impacted this process. A newly constructed dataset of plant macrofossil genera is u...

The middle Paleozoic (∼420-350 Myr) records a major increase in ocean-atmosphere oxygen levels; however, the timing and pattern of oxygenation are poorly constrained. Two well-dated North American locations in Nevada and Illinois were used to generate a high-resolution U-isotopic profile (δ 238 U) spanning ∼70 Myr of the middle Paleozoic. Stratigra...

Diversification is a key property of life. Building on John Phillips' (1860) classic, iconic curve, Phanerozoic biodiversity trajectories have been based, subsequently, on the availability of additional and renewed sets of data and increasingly sophisticated analytical methods. Using relatively few single sources of data from global databases, the...

The Ordovician biodiversification is considered one of the most significant radiations in the marine ecosystems of the entire Phanerozoic. Originally recognized as the Ordovician Radiation, a label retained during most of the 1980s and 1990s, the term Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) was coined in the late 1990s and was subsequently...

The Rhynie chert (Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK) plant Horneophyton lignieri is likely one of the most studied elements of Lower Devonian floras considering both macro and microremains. Intriguingly, while larger plant fragments are exceptionally fossilized, in situ spores are not necessarily well-preserved in the chert: they are dark brown and inten...

A key question about the end-Permian mass extinction (EPME) is why it has been so difficult to determine its impact on land plants: some analyses show a very clear loss of diversity and yet others show little change. Perhaps the key issue is the scale at which the diversity data are analysed. Here we investigate plant diversity changes through the...

Determining the diversity of past floras helps with interpreting both the history and predicting the future of vegetation change. For global-scale and regional-scale diversity studies especially, secondary data are often used but local-scale studies tend to be based on survey data that require rigorous sampling. The correct sampling strategies depe...

Palaeobotany and palynology are the main direct sources of evidence for studying vegetation diversity dynamics through geological time. However, plant fossil diversity is affected by various factors other than vegetation diversity, which need to be taken into account in such studies. The use of fossil-taxa will potentially inflate perceived plant d...

Data from a new comprehensive macrofossil-based compilation of early plant genera are analyzed via a Q-mode factor analysis. This compilation ranges from the Silurian to the earliest Carboniferous and illustrates the key vegetation changes that took place during the configuration of early terrestrial ecosystems. Results reveal that four factors can...

This study documents ‘colonial’ palynomorphs from the Upper Ordovician Ghelli Formation of northeastern Iran. The aggregates of organic–walled microfossils come from the Katian Armoricochitina nigerica - Ancyrochitina merga chitinozoan biozones of this formation. The ‘colonial’ microfossils can be classified as acritarchs and/or cryptospores, but t...

A review of biodiversity curves of marine organisms indicates that, despite fluctuations in amplitude (some large), a large-scale, long-term radiation of life took place during the early Palaeozoic Era; it was aggregated by a succession of more discrete and regionalized radiations across geographies and within phylogenies. This major biodiversifica...

Recent molecular clock data suggest with high probability a Cambrian origin of Embryophyta (also called land plants), indicating that their terrestrialization most probably started about 500 Ma. The fossil record of the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ was limited to marine organisms and not visible in the plant fossil record. The most significant changes in e...

Recent molecular clock data suggest with highest probability a Cambrian origin of Embryophyta (also called land plants), indicating that their terrestrialization most probably started about 500 million years ago. The fossil record of the ‘Cambrian explosion’ was limited to marine organisms and not visible in the plant fossil record. The most signif...

Alethopteris grandinii represents remains of fronds of a medullosalean pteridosperm (probably a small tree) that rapidly migrated across the lowland wetland habitats of Variscan Euramerica in middle Asturian (late Moscovian) times. This was probably caused by changing drainage patterns within the lowland coal swamps, in response to climate and land...

Land plants comprise the bryophytes and the polysporangiophytes. All extant polysporangiophytes are vascular plants (tracheophytes), but to date, some basalmost polysporangiophytes (also called protracheophytes) are considered non‐vascular. Protracheophytes include the Horneophytopsida and Aglaophyton/Teruelia. They are most generally considered ph...

Two major, extended diversifications punctuated the evolution of marine life during the Early Palaeozoic. The interregnum, however, between the Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, is exemplified by the Furongian Gap when there was a marked drop in biodiversity. It is unclear whether the gap is apparent, due to samp...

Most evolutionary innovations in plant vascular tissues, including secondary growth, occurred during the Devonian period (~420 to 360 million years ago). Such innovations had a major impact on land colonisation by plants and on their biodiversity. Here, we show the hydraulic conductance of the secondary xylem of three shrubby or arborescent plant f...

This thematic issue of Geobios compiles the key papers presented at the first workshop on Iberian Palaeobotany and Palynology, held at the Botanical Garden of Cordoba on February 22, 2017. During this event, fifteen communications were presented, including eight dedicated to palaeobotany and seven to Devonian to Miocene palynology. Exposed works we...

On 7–9 July 2016, the palaeontological association Agora Paleobotanica organised its fourth international meeting. It took place at the National History Museum of Brussels and was attended by 45 delegates. This special volume of the Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh compiles key papers presented at this...

The marine fossil record shows five mass extinctions at the Ordovician–Silurian, Frasnian–Famennian (Late Devonian), Permian–Triassic, Triassic–Jurassic and Cretaceous–Palaeogene transitions. However, only one of these significantly disrupted plant evolution. We clearly need to look again at what we really mean by mass extinctions events, especiall...

The Lower Devonian Posongchong Formation (Wenshan, Yunnan Province, southwestern China) consists of a series of continental deposits with an outstanding plant megafossil diversity. More than 20 years ago, this formation was interpreted as ‘Siegenian' (∼Pragian) in age based on palynology. However, such interpretation needs further evidence because...

The fossil record indicates that vascular plant diversity followed five different but complementary dynamics through the Phanerozoic Eon, the so-called Evolutionary Floras. Those floras reflect major transitions of plant evolution, from the earliest undoubted occurrences of vascular plants in the macrofossil record (tracheophytes; mid-Silurian time...

Based on a comprehensive dataset of plant family distributions through geological time, broad patterns have been revealed in the overall trajectory of vegetation history. It has provided firmer definitions to the traditional concepts of Palaeophytic, Mesophytic and Cenophytic floras, as well as revealing two pre-Carboniferous, “early land plant” fl...

Lycopsids are a minor component of current terrestrial herbaceous floras. However, lycopsid fossil diversity shows a great diversity and disparity including heterosporous woody plants, e.g. the giant isoetaleans that populated the extensive Pennsylvanian wetlands. The earliest known isoetaleans come from late Devonian localities from China. Here, w...

Characters used in the phylogenetic analysis. Most are identical to those of Xue [8]. In bold: characters modified (2 to 4) in comparison with Xue [8]. (PDF)

Tree file (Newick format) of strap analysis. (PDF)

Age file (R package paleotree format) of strap analysis. (PDF)

Data matrix for the phylogenetic analysis. Raw data based on Xue [8]. Two taxa in bold (Lilingostrobus and Wuxia) have been added. Some modifications of raw coding in comparison with Xue [8] are shown in boxed numbers. (PDF)

List and temporal distribution of lycopsid genera involved in phylogenetic analysis. Absolute ages used for the time-scaled phylogeny appear in brackets. They are from the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (v2016/04). See S4 Text for supplementary references. (PDF)

Data matrix (Nexus format) of PAUP analysis. (PDF)

Supplementary references. (PDF)

Three significant mass extinctions and five mass depletions in biodiversity are currently accepted in the Phanerozoic marine fossil record. While some of these marine biodiversity crises seem to correspond to important extinctions on land it is unclear if the dynamics are always similar. Here we compare the trajectories of marine and terrestrial li...

A new basal land plant, Teruelia diezii gen. et sp. nov., is described from the shallow-water marine deposits of the Lower Devonian (Lochkovian–Pragian) Nogueras Formation of the Iberian Peninsula (north Gondwana palaeocontinent). Teruelia is preserved as a compression fossil and consists of isotomously branched, robust stems terminated in large, f...

Mass extinctions are crucial to understanding changes in biodiversity through time. However, it is still disputed whether extinction dynamics in the marine and terrestrial biotas followed comparable trajectories. For instance, while marine realms have suffered five strong depletions in diversity, the so-called ‘Big Five’ mass extinctions, only the...

Acrostichum is considered today an opportunistic fern in disturbed areas, which indicates the first stages of colonisation of such zones. However, in the fossil record, Acrostichum appears related to fluvio-lacustrine environments, freshwater marshes and mangrove deposits. We report here for first time fossil evidence of Acrostichum that reveals a...

Fossil fruits pertaining to the mangrove palm genus Nypa Steck, (Arecaceae, Arecales) were collected from a new plant-bearing assemblage in the Arguis Formation (Fm.), northeastern Ebro Basin (Arguis, Huesca Province, Spain). This formation is Bartonian to early Priabonian in age and comprises pro-delta and carbonate platform deposits. The new asse...

Methods in historical biogeography have revolutionized our ability to infer the evolution of ancestral geographical ranges from phylogenies of extant taxa, the rates of dispersals, and biotic connectivity among areas. However, extant taxa are likely to provide limited and potentially biased information about past biogeographic processes, due to ext...

Darwin described the Cretaceous diversification and subsequent rapid rise of flowering plants (angiosperms) as an “abominable mystery”: how could they have achieved worldwide ecological dominance by early Paleogene times when the oldest angiosperm fossils are only Cretaceous in age? However, recent phylogenetic and palaeobiogeographical analyses ha...

A new well-preserved spore assemblage has been discovered from the Lower Devonian Nogueras Formation of Mezquita de Loscos (Teruel Province, north-eastern Spain). The palynoflora includes 34 spore species belonging to 20 genera, among which 14 are new for the locality, e.g. Apiculiretusispora, Brochotriletes, Cirratriradites, Iberoespora, Knoxispor...

Recent fieldwork has uncovered three new localities from the Lower Devonian of Mezquita de Loscos (Teruel Province, Spain) with further plant mega-fossils and the first record of micro-fossils. Such plant remains have been interpreted as belonging to a basal euphyllophyte, Taeniocrada-like stems, Hostinella genus and paired sporangia. Fourteen spor...

Understanding the processes that have generated the latitudinal biodiversity gradient and the continental differences in tropical biodiversity remains a major goal of evolutionary biology. Here we estimate the timing and direction of range shifts of extant flowering plants (angiosperms) between tropical and non-tropical zones, and into and out of t...

The Zosterophyllopsida originated in the Silurian and became prominent vascular components of Early Devonian floras worldwide. An updated dataset of zosterophyllopsids at species level is analysed to compare the taxic composition of five putative palaeophytogeographic units, Laurussia, Siberia, northwestern Gondwana, Kazakhstan and northeastern Gon...

Plants have a long evolutionary history, during which mass extinction events dramatically affected Earth's ecosystems and its biodiversity. The fossil record can shed light on the diversification dynamics of plant life and reveal how changes in the origination–extinction balance have contributed to shaping the current flora. We use a novel Bayesian...

Factor analysis of a data set representing the global distribution of vascular plant families through time shows the broad pattern of vegetation history can be explained in terms of five Evolutionary Floras. The Rhyniophytic (=Eotrachyophytic) Flora represents the very earliest (Silurian and earliest Devonian) vascular plants, notably the Rhyniophy...

In this paper, we examine the diversity trends and the evolutionary patterns of Triassic conodonts through a newly powered large-scale data-set compiled directly from the primary literature. Paleodiversity dynamics analyses have been undertaken by working at the species level and using a system of time units based on biozone subdivisions for a fine...

Five great taxonomic extinctions (the so-called ‘Big Five Mass Extinctions’) are widely recognized in life history, at the end of the Ordovician, Frasnian (Late Devonian), Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous. All of them were originally identified in the marine fossil record and have been interpreted as the result of abrupt global environmental change...

The Zosterophyllopsida were major contributors to the diversification of early land plants. We present the first detailed analysis of the diversity dynamics of these plants from an updated database of all currently recognized zosterophyllopsid species. A set of quantitative methods classically used in palaeodiversity studies was applied to two data...

Documenting extinction phenomena remains a vital topic in palaeontology, especially in the context of the marine fossil record. It has been widely assumed that the methods that have been developed in these studies are of universal application throughout palaeontology, but there have been few attempts to test them with plant fossils. We explored the...

This study characterizes the phosphorylated pathway of Ser biosynthesis (PPSB) in Arabidopsis thaliana by targeting phosphoserine phosphatase (PSP1), the last enzyme of the pathway. Lack of PSP1 activity delayed embryo development, leading to aborted embryos that could be classified as early curled cotyledons. The embryo-lethal phenotype of psp1 mu...

Photorespiration is a primary metabolic pathway, which, given its energy costs, has often been viewed as a wasteful process. Despite having reached the consensus that one important function of photorespiration is the removal of toxic metabolite intermediates, other possible functions have emerged, and others could well emerge in the future. As a pr...

Using a combination of species richness, polycohort and constrained cluster analyses, the plant biodiversity of Pennsylvanian (late Carboniferous) tropicalwetlands (“coal swamps”) has been investigated in five areas in Western Europe and eastern North America: South Wales, Pennines, Ruhr, Saarland and Sydney coal basins. In all cases, species richn...

By taking gymnosperms as a case study, this article evaluates the perception of plant life history from the fossil record to test the biases associated with the time-dependent aspects of the taxonomy, following a stepwise modelling procedure based on two divergent sets of time units. The idea that the effects of the temporal component of paleobiolo...

The reliability and the identification of potential biases are central aspects to providing an accurate robust palaeontological data analysis. In the last decade, older concepts of evolutionary processes and patterns have been revised in the light of new methods and hypotheses. Moreover, new mathematical algorithms have been developed to better int...

Studying the discontinuity patterns of Paleozoic vascular plants provides a global vision of these key events from the multivariate methods viewpoint. Non-metric multidimensional scaling, detrended correspondence analysis and cluster analysis have been employed together with a set of diversity and abundance measures and an evaluation of the geologi...

Palaeobotanical records of the Cameros basin are scarce and limited to a few localities. Two new records , mainly corresponding to Barremian deposits near Salas de los Infantes and Hortezuelos (Burgos) are presented. The new flora from Horcajuelos-1 near Salas corresponds to fluvial deposits of the Pinilla de los Moros Fm. A lower bed is dominated...

Découverte d'une paléoflore lochkovienne (Dévonien inférieur) dans la péninsule ibérique. Le Dévonien Inférieur représente un épisode important dans l'histoire de la vie des plantes, marqué par une diversification importante des végétaux terrestres. Malheureusement, les restes de plantes dévoniennes primitives de la péninsule Ibérique sont rares. D...

Cascales-Miñana, B. & Cleal, C.J. 2011: Plant fossil record and survival analyses. Lethaia, Vol. 45, pp. 71–82.Survival analysis is a classic palaeobiological method widely used on the animal fossil record. This study reports the first application of survivorship analyses on the plant fossil record from a global viewpoint and provides a new compara...

The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) controls the development of plants and plays a crucial role in their response to adverse environmental conditions like salt and water stress. Complex interactions between ABA and sugar signal transduction pathways have been shown. However, the role played by glycolysis in these interactions is not known. In the...

Cascales-Miñana, B., Muñoz-Bertomeu, J., Ros, R., Segura, J. 2010: Trends and patterns in the evolution of vascular plants: macroevolutionary implications of a multilevel taxonomic analysis. Lethaia, 10.1111/j.1502-3931.2009.00212.x Studying the macroevolutionary patterns of vascular plants from the Silurian to the present-day provides a global rec...

Plant metabolism is highly coordinated with development. However, an understanding of the whole picture of metabolism and its interactions with plant development is scarce. In this work, we show that the deficiency in the plastidial glycolytic glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPCp) leads to male sterility in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thali...

“Vallazmorra-1” and “Vallazmorra-2” dinosaur bearing sites are located north of the vicinity of Santo Domingo de Silos between Hinojar de Cervera and Hortezuelos villages close to the road BU-911, in the communal terrains of Hortezuelos, in the southeastern Burgos province. Both sites are located in the western Cameros Basin at the northernmost par...

Glycolysis is a central metabolic pathway that provides energy and generates precursors for the synthesis of primary metabolites such as amino acids and fatty acids. In plants, glycolysis occurs in the cytosol and plastids, which complicates the understanding of this essential process. As a result, the contribution of each glycolytic pathway to the...

Glycolysis is a central metabolic pathway that, in plants, occurs in both the cytosol and the plastids. The glycolytic glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) catalyzes the conversion of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate to 1,3-bisphosphoglycerate with concomitant reduction of NAD(+) to NADH. Both cytosolic (GAPCs) and plastidial (GAPCps) GAPDH a...