About
33
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Introduction
I am currently working on paleogene fossil flora from France and China. My email: cedric.del-rio@mnhn.fr
Additional affiliations
April 2019 - July 2021
October 2015 - November 2018
Position
- PhD
Description
- Les Icacinaceae du Paléogène du Bassin de Paris
Education
September 2015 - November 2018
Field of study
- Paleobotany: Les Icacinaceae du Paléogène du Bassin de Paris
September 2013 - July 2015
Publications
Publications (33)
Flowers embedded in amber are rare. Only about 70 flowers or inflorescences have been described among which only one lamiid is known. Nevertheless, these fossils are important to our understanding of evolutionary process and past diversity due to the exceptional preservation of fragile structures not normally preserved. In this work, a new flower n...
Based on a worldwide dataset of molecular sequence data from three plastid DNA markers (rbcL, rbcL-accD-accD, rps4-trnS) obtained from 109 species of Hymenophyllum (Hymenophyllaceae), we investigated the systematics and bioge- ographic origins of the New Caledonian (NC) members of this fern genus, which were thought to include 16 species with 10 en...
Menispermaceae are a pantropical and temperate family with an extensive fossil record during the Paleogene, especially in North America and Europe, but with much less evidence from Asia. The latest fossil evidence indicates a succession of tropical to sub‐tropical flora on the central Tibetan Plateau during the Paleogene. However, the biogeographic...
Significance
The ancient topography of the Tibetan Plateau and its role in biotic evolution are still poorly understood, mostly due to a lack of fossil evidence. Our discovery of ∼47-Mya plant fossils from a present elevation of 4,850 m in central Tibet, diminishes, significantly, that lack of knowledge. The fossils represent a humid subtropical ve...
In the past decades, the concept of Icacinaceae has been refined greatly, as morphological and molecular data have led to a narrower circumscription of a monophyletic Icacinaceae family with only 23 genera (vs 58 sensu Sleumer, 1942). This family possesses an extensive fossil record, important to the biogeographic history of the Northern Hemisphere...
Premise of research. The Anacardiaceae family is distributed throughout the vegetated continents. The fossil record indicates extensive diversification of the family during the Paleogene and, in particular, during the Eocene. Despite the abundant fossil record of this period, there are only a few reliable anacardiaceous fossils in the Paris Basin....
Spinescence is an important functional trait possessed by many plant species for physical defence against mammalian herbivores. The development of spinescence must have been closely associated with both biotic and abiotic factors in the geological past, but knowledge of spinescence evolution suffers from a dearth of fossil records, with most studie...
Cupressaceae fossil tree stumps from the early Oligocene Lühe coal mine in southwestern China contain abundant quartz-petrified damage traces. The wood fossils were assigned to Taxodioxylon (very similar to extant Taxodium) based on wood anatomy analysis. Within the woods, three types of arthropods- and one fungus-mediated ichnofossils LHIF 1–4 (Lü...
Recent paleobotanical investigations in Vietnam provide a good opportunity to improve our understanding of the biodiversity and paleoclimatic conditions in the geological past of Southeast Asia. Palms (Arecaceae) are a diverse family of typical thermophilous plants with a relatively low tolerance for freezing. In this study, we describe well-preser...
Trapa (water chestnut or water caltrop) is a genus of annual free-floating plants mostly native to Africa and Eurasia and included in the family Lythraceae. The genus only contains 10 species today but has a large number of species in the Neogene record, mainly based on fruits but also on the occurrence of pollen grains. In China, several species h...
Icacinaceae are well represented in the modern tropical flora of East Asia, but this family has no confirmed macrofossils from this region. Most of the unambiguous fossils (e.g., endocarps) are from the Paleogene of North America and Europe, where the family is no longer present. Here we report a fossil endocarp of the liana genus Iodes from the Ol...
Illigera (Hernandiaceae) is a liana genus distributed mainly in the tropical Asia and Africa. Previous fossil records suggested that Illigera was restricted in western North America during the Eocene. Recent paleobotanical investigation has unveiled a Paleogene flora that is totally different from today's vegetation in central Tibet. This provides...
Matrix from the Database E-Identification Icacinaceae ---- Del Rio et al. 2020 Survey of the fruits and endocarps of Icacinaceae (Lamiids, Icacinales) European Journal of Taxonomy 645, 1-130.
The Key generated using this matrix is available at: http://icacinaceae-fruits.identificationkey.org/mkey.html
This is the Excel format of the Table 1 (not updated, see the comments of the paper in this website to have updates after 2019) - Del Rio and De Franceschi 2020. Fossil record of the Icacinaceae and its paleogeographic implications, Rev. Pal. Pal. 273.
Ceratophyllaceae Gray is a cosmopolitan submersed family in angiosperm. The fossil record is mainly composed of fruits ranging in age from the Cretaceous to the Neogene within the Northern Hemisphere. However, its fossil record in Asia is sparse. Here we report on a fossil fruit attributed to Ceratophyllum aff. muricatum Cham. from the early middle...
Icacinaceae Miers are a well-described family. However, the family lacks a comprehensive guide to endocarp morphology, which would be an important tool for interpreting the family’s extensive fossil record of endocarp remains. In this survey, we describe fruits and endocarps of 88 species of Icacinaceae s. str., four of Icacinaceae s. lat. (now Met...
The Icacinaceae family have an important fossil record, mainly in the Paleogene of North America and Europe. The importance of this family in the Paleogene of the Paris Basin has been investigated recently based on two assemblages, Le Quesnoy (Houdancourt) and Rivecourt (Oise), and here we treat the Icacinaceae from three additional early Eocene si...
Premise:
Apocynaceae is common in the fossil record, especially as seed remains from the Neogene of Europe and North America, but rare in Asia. Intrafamilial assignment is difficult due to the lack of diagnostic characters, and new fossil and modern data are needed to understand the paleobiogeography of this group.
Methods:
We studied three Apoc...
A new fossil occurrence of Ostrya (Betulaceae) is reported based on 14 involucre impressions from the lower Oligocene of Lühe Basin, Yunnan Province, Southwest China. They are characterized by their bladder-like shape with longitudinal veins and perpendicular or branched intercostal veins that form a reticulate venation. The discovery of these foss...
The Rivecourt site (Thanetian from Oise, France) includes about 70 endocarp specimens distributed among five Iodes Blume species. Of the 36 specimens of Iodes rivecourtensis Del Rio, Thomas & De Franceschi one has an abnormal morphology. It is divided in two locules rather than one, and two apical apertures per face in contrast to normal specimen p...
The floristic diversity of the Le Quesnoy amber locality (Ypresian, Oise France) remains understudied. Icacinaceae Miers, particularly, require careful study, as they are the most abundant family in the site, with 185 nearly complete lignitic endocarps specimens and numerous fragments. In this paper, we recognise three species of Icacinaceae, two o...
Icacinaceae Miers are a family of trees, shrubs, and lianas with a current pantropical distribution. The family is well known in the fossil record, especially from the Palaeogene of Europe and North America, with the modern genus Iodes being particularly well represented. Here, we describe five new species of Iodes based on fossil endocarps with ho...
The Icacinaceae family is a group of Angiosperm with a large fossil record, mainly from the North American and European Paleogene. Especially, fossils related to Icacinaceae were found in five sites from the Paris Basin, mainly as endocarp remains, in the Thanetian and Ypresian. Therefore, these sites constitute a good opportunity to study the impa...
The fern genera Crepidomanes and Polyphlebium are clearly distinct, yet often confused in the wild and in collections. Morphological and molecular investigations were performed to find taxonomic characters for discriminating species occurring in southeastern South America (southern Brazil and northeastern Argentina). Our results show that the genus...
Projects
Projects (4)
The overarching goal of ENLIVEN is to dissect the process of biological extinction through the study of the biodiversity dynamics of endemic European mammals and their response to modifications of their environment, in a climatic change context. This project will exploit the unparalleled fossil record from the Quercy phosphate infillings localities in France to test the impact of biotic (intrinsic like diet, body mass, brain complexity, or extrinsic such as competition with other mammals or predation) and abiotic factors (temperature, sea level) on the diversity dynamics of endemic mammalian clades. ENLIVEN implies an ambitious sampling effort at the mammal and floral scale. Indeed, it includes paleobotanical studies to provide for the first time, a local proxy for environmental changes.
The Paleogene period is marked by significant changes in climate and biodiversity, particularly during the Paleocene/Eocene transition when temperatures dramatically increased. This study focuses on the examination of fossil fruits and seeds from various sites in the Paris Basin, with the goal of reconstructing local paleoenvironments and exploring changes in paleobiodiversity. In collaboration with other members of CR2P, the project also involves the investigation of fossil wood. Advanced techniques such as CT scans will be utilized to gain a deeper understanding of the specimens. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to shed light on the biogeographic history of plant families and their evolution during the Paleogene period.
The Jianglang locality (Bangor County, Tibetan Plateau, China) is situated at an altitude of 4850 m along the Bangong-Nujiang Suture. The Cenozoic sediments belong to the Niubao Formation in the lower part and the Dingqing Formation in the upper part. The fossil site has 5 distinct sections, and we find in total ca. 1500 fruits, seeds, leaves, tubers and stems. Among them, ca. 150 fossils correspond to ca. 34 morphotypes of fruits and seeds. The aim of this project is to study in detail the fruit and seed biodiversity of the Jianglang site, to reconstruct the paleoenvironment and to improve the understanding of the biogeographic role of the Tibetan region during the Eocene.
