Zhuo FengYunnan University · Institute of Palaeontology
Zhuo Feng
Doctor of Philosophy
About
98
Publications
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Introduction
I mainly focus on late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic plants, plant-insect interactions, and terrestrial ecosystems. If you need any of my papers, please send me an email, jumperfeng@126.com, zhuofeng@ynu.edu.cn
Additional affiliations
January 2020 - present
July 2017 - September 2017
February 2017 - present
Education
September 2005 - July 2008
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Field of study
- Geology and Palaeontology
September 2002 - July 2005
September 1998 - July 2002
Publications
Publications (98)
Beetles are the most diverse group of macroscopic organisms since the mid-Mesozoic. Much
of beetle speciosity is attributable to myriad life habits, particularly diverse-feeding strategies
involving interactions with plant substrates, such as wood. However, the life habits and early
evolution of wood-boring beetles remain shrouded in mystery from a...
The end-Permian mass extinction is the greatest biotic crisis in Earth history causing the extinction of a large number of marine and terrestrial animals globally. However, how land plants responded to the catastrophe remains controversial. The successive plant-bearing beds in China provide a unique window into the great vegetation change through t...
Endophytic oviposition behavior, the insertion of eggs into plant tissues, represents a sophisticated reproductive strategy of insects.¹ This process is accomplished by employing a specialized egg-laying device, the ovipositor, that effectively protects eggs through plant tissue concealment.²,³ Endophytic oviposition behavior is currently common in...
Plants can move in various complex ways in response to external stimuli.1,2 These mechanisms include responses to environmental triggers, such as tropic responses to light or gravity and nastic responses to humidity or contact.3 Nyctinasty, the movements involving circadian rhythmic folding at night and opening at daytime of plant leaves or leaflet...
A species of adpressed marattialean fern having pinnules with fertile organs, Cyathocarpus benefoliatii Yu.Guo, Zhou et Z.Feng sp. nov., is established from the Lopingian (upper Permian) of eastern Yunnan Province, Southwest China. Fronds of this new species are at least tripinnate, with alternately arranged penultimate pinnae, alternately or subop...
Interactions between arthropods and plants have been documented extensively in late Paleozoic trees and ground cover plants, but they have rarely been recorded in late Paleozoic climbers. In this study, we present the second example of coprolites preserved within the plant tissue from the early Permian fossil Lagerstätte Wuda Tuff Flora. The host a...
This paper reports the first in-situ fossil evidence for silica biomineralisation in Permian plants. The discovery reinforces the significant role that land plants have played in influencing the evolution of Earth systems in deep time.
During the 11th German Antarctic North Victoria Land Expedition in 2015/16,
exceptionally well-preserved permineralized Kykloxylon stems—the wood of
the iconic Dicroidium plants of the Gondwanan Triassic—were collected from
the Middle to Upper Triassic Helliwell Formation in north Victoria Land,
Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica. Some of these l...
A list of all known fossil wood taxa recorded from the Triassic, up to June of 2024, is provided. The list contains 50 genera and 130 species of gymnospermous wood taxa documented from 16 countries across seven continents. Specifically, 17 genera and 27 species were reported from Asia, 10 genera and 39 species from Europe, 3 genera and 3 species fr...
Mesopsychids, a long-proboscid mecopteran group, are presumably associated with the pollination of Mesozoic gymnosperms. Despite over 100 years of study on the genus Mesopsyche, only isolated wings have been discovered. Mesopsyche is now redefined as a monotypic genus with only one species, Mesopsyche triareolata. The other species previously class...
A list of all known fossil wood taxa described or recorded from the Jurassic from the published literatures up to March of 2024 is given. The list contains 54 genera and 203 species of gymnospermous wood taxa described from 36 countries ranging all the seven continents. 35 genera and 98 species were reported from Asia, 25 genera and 58 species from...
Mesozoic is an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to the study of Earth and life evolution during the Mesozoic Era. Its scope within the geosciences is broad, encompassing disciplines such as stratigraphy, palaeontology, palaeogeography, palaeoclimate, palaeoenvironment, geochronology, sedimentology, geochemistry, palaeomagnetism, and tectonic geo...
The clam shrimp species, Triglypta pingquanensis Wang, 1984, is reported in the Middle Jurassic Daohugou beds from two localities in Inner Mongolia. The species is predominant in the Middle Jurassic Longmen Formation in Yingzi Village, Pingquan City, northern Hebei. This discovery significantly strengthens the correlation between the Haifanggou and...
The end-Permian mass extinction was the most severe ecological event during the Phanerozoic and has long been presumed contemporaneous across terrestrial and marine realms with global environmental deterioration triggered by the Siberian Traps Large Igneous Province. We present high-precision zircon U-Pb geochronology by the chemical abrasion–isoto...
A new species of adpressed leptosporangiate fern, Szea yunnanensis sp. nov., is described from the Xuanwei Formation (upper Permian) of Yunnan Province, Southwest China. Fronds of this new species are at least bipinnate, with suboppositely to alternately arranged cladophleboid pinnules. Fertile pinnules are triangular to falcate shaped and show sli...
A new spinicaudatan species Triglypta jiyuanensis Liao & Huang sp. nov. is described from the Upper Jurassic Maao Formation in the Jiyuan Basin, northwestern Henan Province, China. The carapace of the new species is ornamented with punctae, linear arrangements of punctae, and radial lirae. The new species differs from those of the early Triglypta f...
Thaumatomeropidae is an enigmatic mecopteran family previously known exclusively from the Triassic Madygen entomofauna of Kyrgyzstan. Thaumatomeropids display mosaic venation, closely resembling those of Meropeidae and Eomeropidae, yet distinguished by some more “primitive” characters. Here we describe and illustrate a new thaumatomeropid species,...
Die aus dem Holz jungpaläozoischer Koniferen bekannte, von den Larven früher polyphager Käfer verursachte Fraßspur Pectichnus multicylindricus wird mit neuen Funden für weitere drei Vorkommen karbonischer und permischer Sedimentationsbecken in Mittel-und Südosteuropa belegt. Damit kann die stratigraphische Reichweite ihres Erstauftretens bis in das...
Main conclusion
The pistillate flowers of Lithocarpus dealbatus show two pollen tube (PT) arresting sites (the style-joining and micropyle) within the pistil during the postpollination-prezygotic stage. The PT, arrested at the pre-ovule stage, enhanced PT competition allowing the most compatible PTs to enter the ovary to ensure the highest fertiliz...
The end-Permian mass extinction (EPME) caused significant changes in the marine and terrestrial realms because of global environmental deterioration caused by intensive volcanic activities. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in sediments are powerful proxies indicating the frequency and intensity of wildfires during the Permian–Triassic (P–T) tr...
The enrichment of mercury (Hg) in sediments has been increasingly utilized as a proxy for large-scale volcanism. However, a causal link between these two remains ambiguous, as Hg enrichments can be caused by many non-volcanic factors, e.g., changes in local depositional environments or terrestrial runoffs. In this study, we present high-resolution...
The eusporangiate fern order Marattiales are represented in the living flora by the family Marattiaceae but have an extensive fossil record stretching back to the Carboniferous. The family Psaroniaceae included important wetland plants in the Carboniferous and Permian. In this work we present a new member of the Psaroniaceae from the Lloyd Cove Sea...
Two partly anatomically preserved axes parallelly situated in a slab collected from an in situ volcanic ash bed called “Bělka” of the Whetstone Horizon, Kladno Formation (Pennsylvanian), Czech Republic, were studied in detail. Anatomically, both axes possess a C-shaped xylem strand with protoxylem tracheids situated on the convex side, demonstratin...
Nurse logs are common in modern forests from boreal to temperate and tropical ecosystems. However, the evolution of the nurse log strategy remains elusive because of their rare occurrence in the fossil record. We report seven coniferous nurse logs from lowermost to uppermost Permian strata of northern China that have been colonized by conifer and e...
Lycophytes were an important group of plants in the late Permian (Lopingian) vegetation of Southwest China. However, our understanding of these lycophytes is based mostly on the study of megafossil specimens. Here, we describe a unique lycophyte megaspore, Paxillitriletes permicus Sui, McLoughlin et Feng sp. nov., from the Lopingian Xuanwei Formati...
Permineralised stems of Ductoagathoxylon tsaaganensis Cai, Zhang et Feng sp. nov. are described from the Upper Permian strata of the Tsaagan Tolgoy section, South Gobi Basin, Mongolia. The stems were preserved with pith and primary and secondary xylems. The pith is solid, heterocellular, and characterised by regularly arranged clusters of secretory...
Continental records of the Permian–Triassic boundary are characterized by intense chemical weathering, likely due to global warming and acid rainfall associated with volcanism. However, the weathering history throughout the late Permian has not been interrogated in time-equivalent continental successions because of the lack of stratigraphically con...
The Carboniferous-Permian strata in the North China Block (NCB) contain abundant fossils, coals and natural gases. Establishing a high-resolution timescale for the Carboniferous and Permian in the NCB is essential to understand the geologic events and explore the spatial and temporal distributions of the natural resources. The upper Carboniferous a...
The Carboniferous-Permian strata in the North China Block (NCB) contain abundant fossils, coals and natural gases. Establishing a high-resolution timescale for the Carboniferous and Permian in the NCB is essential to understand the geologic events and explore the spatial and temporal distributions of the natural resources. The upper Carboniferous a...
Leaves are important vegetative organs of plants. However, our knowledge of fossil conifer leaves has been mostly obtained from compression-impression specimens. Compared with the abundant impression-compression leaf fossils, permineralized conifer leaf fossils with preserved cellular details are extremely rare. Therefore, leaf anatomies of fossil...
The Siberian Traps large igneous province (STLIP) is commonly invoked as the primary driver of global environmental changes that triggered the end-Permian mass extinction (EPME). Here, we explore the contributions of coeval felsic volcanism to end-Permian environmental changes. We report evidence of extreme Cu enrichment in the EPME interval in Sou...
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...
A new species of adpressed marattialean fern with vegetative and fertile pinnules, Pectinangium xuanweiense sp. nov., is described from the Lopingian (upper Permian) in eastern Yunnan and western Guizhou provinces, Southwest China. The fronds of this new species are at least bipinnate, with linear to lanceolate ultimate pinnae. The pinnules are alt...
Trees faithfully record the physiological responses to climatic and environmental changes during their life spans, which can be obtained by using quantitative analysis of the anatomical characteristics of growth rings. Thus, quantitative analysis of growth rings is widely used in modern forestry, geography, palaeoclimatology and palaeontology. In t...
The Lopingian (upper Permian) in Southwest China yields diverse marattialean plants; however, most of these have been recorded as isolated fragments of fronds, pinnules, and stems. Marattialean Qasimia specimens were recently collected from the upper Permian Xuanwei Formation of Yunnan Province, Southwest China. The well-preserved synangia, sporang...
A new permineralized stem, Protophyllocladoxylon yiwuense Gou et Feng sp. nov., is described from the Middle Jurassic Xishanyao Formation in Naomaohu Town of Yiwu County, Hami City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Northwest China. The stem is only preserved with secondary xylem, which is pycnoxylic and exclusively composed of tracheids and parenc...
Palaeo-wildfire, which had an important impact on the end Permian terrestrial ecosystems, became more intense in the latest Permian globally, evidenced by extensive occurrence of fossil charcoals. In this study, we report abundant charcoals from the upper part of the Xuanwei Formation and the Permian–Triassic transitional Kayitou Formation in the L...
Fossil wood serves as a natural data source for deciphering plant physiological features and paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental conditions experienced during its lifespan. Although permineralized conifer wood commonly occurs in the Jurassic of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang), Northwest China, their physiological features and paleoclim...
Clam shrimp (Spinicaudata) are worldwide distributed branchiopod crustaceans specialised in ephemeral freshwater habitats. The Carboniferous is an important period for the early evolution and diversification of clam shrimp. Compared with the rare and geographically confined fossil record of the Devonian, clam shrimp in the Carboniferous have a much...
A new permineralized stem, Ductoagathoxylon wangii Gou et Feng, is described from the Middle Jurassic Xishanyao Formation in Naomaohu Town of Yiwu County, Hami City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Northwest China. The fossil stem is preserved with pith, primary xylem, and secondary xylem. The solid pith is heterocellular, and characterized by th...
A monospecific flora containing a peltasperm species, Germaropteris martinsii, is discovered from the uppermost Permian Kayitou Formation of Southwest China. The epidermal characteristics of G. martinsii from the South China Block are described for the first time on the basis of charcoalified specimens. The plant is characterized by small, leathery...
Marattialeans were the most species-rich fern group in the Lopingian (late Permian) Cathaysian floras in the South China Block. However, most previous studies on marattialean ferns focused on their vegetative morphology; in contrast, their reproductive biology has rarely been examined. New compression materials of Zhutheca densata (Gu et Zhi) Liu,...
Plants and insects are the two most diverse groups among terrestrial macro-organisms. They interact with each other to various extents, and constitute the most significant part of complex terrestrial ecosystems. The early Permian tuff flora in Wuda, China, buried by volcanic ash in its growth position, represents an intricate peat-forming forest in...
The Permian–Triassic transition is concerned with a critical time interval during the evolutionary history of terrestrial ecosystems. However, the ecological underpinnings of terrestrial ecosystems during this time interval are poorly understood due to an impoverished fossil record. One of the more understudied episodes in the history of life is th...
An exceptionally well-preserved wood, Ningxiaites shitanjingensis sp. nov., is described from the uppermost Permian Sunjiagou Formation of Northwest China providing new evidence for plant diversity and palaeoecological features of the Cathaysian Flora. The new plant is characterised by a eustelic vascular system with thick pycnoxylic woody cylinder...
Anomozamites (SCHIMPER) is one of the most characteristic fossil genera of the extinct order Bennettitales (Cycadophyta). It is notably diverse and extends from the Triassic to the Cretaceous in Laurasia. In total, thirty Anomozamites species and nine conformis species have been documented from sixty-two Mesozoic fossil sites in China. However, som...
Wood boring represents a common feeding and survival strategy in several lineages of beetles. The larvae of wood-boring beetles hatch and excavate tunnels in wood during their development. The origin and evolutionary history of this life habit, however, remain poorly understood to date, as the fossil record is scarce. We present new silicified coni...
An enriched bed of diverse plant cuticles is reported for the first time from the upper Guodikeng Formation of the Dalongkou section in Jimsar, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Northwest China. The cuticles were attributed to a seed fern and several types of coniferalean plants based on the epidermal characters. The most predominant plant in the f...
Sedimentary deposits of the Permian–Triassic transition are well-exposed in numerous outcrops of South China. Depending on the palaeogeographic positions of the sections, their lithofacies vary from fully marine, shallow marine, lagoonal, lacustrine, and fluvial to alluvial. In the present study, conchostracans (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) were newly...
植物与昆虫是当今陆地生态系统的重要组成部分, 两者之间的相互关系为认识陆地生 态系统结构和功能提供独一无二的信息。古生代是植物和昆虫起源和早期演化的关键地质 时期, 然而由于缺乏对该时期化石材料的系统研究, 植物和昆虫之间的相互关系及其协同演 化过程还存在许多未解之谜。对二叠纪晚期 (约 2.53 亿年前) 植物茎干中甲虫蛀孔的详细解 剖学研究, 证实当时蛀木甲虫利用真菌实现个体发育过程中食性的转变, 而且蛀木甲虫可能 存在初步的社会分工, 并生活在复杂的生态网络中; 进一步研究显示晚二叠世蛀木甲虫或对 松柏类植物引起严重的虫灾。当前研究表明, 渗矿化植物化石标本在探索地质历史时期动植 物相互作用方面具有巨大研究潜力, 可为深时陆地生态系统的重建和演化提供宝贵信息。 关键词 古生代; 植物与...
Today, cycads are a small group of gymnospermous plants with a limited distribution in the (sub)tropics, but they were major constituents of Mesozoic floras. Fossil leaves sporadically found in latest Carboniferous and Permian floras have putatively been ascribed to cycads. However, their true affinity remains unclear due to the lack of anatomical...
Land plants are one of the major constituents of terrestrial ecosystems on Earth, and play an irreplaceable role in human activities today. If we are to understand the extant plants, it is imperative that we have some understanding of the fossil plants from the deep geological past, particularly those that occurred during their early evolutionary h...
Leaf traces are important structures in higher plants that connect leaves and the stem vascular system. The anatomy and emission pattern of leaf traces are well studied in extant vascular plants, but remain poorly understood in fossil lineages. We quantitatively analysed the leaf traces in the late Permian conifer Ningxiaites specialis from Northwe...
Oribatid mites (Acari: Oribatida) are very diverse and important detritivorous and fungivorous micro-arthropods in modern forest ecosystems. Although the fossil record of oribatid mites can be traced to the Early Devonian, the paleoecology of oribatid mites during the deep geological past remains poorly understood. Remarkably good preservation of t...
Remarkably good preserved and coprolite-filled tunnel works are presented in permineralised conifer wood from the lower Permian Rotliegend (Asselian) of Thuringia. In comparison to several fossil examples we refer this feeding habit to oribatid mites (Acari: Oribatida), a group of very diverse and important detritivorous and fungivorous micro-arthr...
AMiddle Pennsylvanian tuff bed (the Bělka bed) in the roof of the Lower Radnice Coal bears T0 peat-forming vegetation
preserved in growth position. This vegetation has been studied in detail at the 12 hectares large Ovčín coal deposit in the
southern part of the Radnice Basin. Documentation of the fossil record in six excavations and that previousl...
Leaf skeletonization represents a distinctive form of insect feeding behavior. It commonly occurs in angiosperm leaves after their initial appearance during the Early Cretaceous. This type of feeding behavior rarely has been documented in pre-Mesozoic fossils. We describe the earliest evidence of insect-skeletonized leaves of Dictyophyllum nathorst...
Noeggerathiales are an extinct group of spore-bearing plants of uncertain systematic position that are known from Carboniferous and Permian age Euramerican and Cathaysian floras that occurred in present-day Europe, North America, and East Asia. The order Noeggerathiales includes over 50 species of more than 20 fossil genera, but their paleoecology...