Plants escaped an ancient mass extinction

There are biases in the fossil record of plants, and the invertebrate and vertebrate communities they supported, because the preservation potential of these organisms is highly dependent on the physico-chemical conditions of where they lived6. Spores and pollen are produced annually at logarithmical...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2019-03, Vol.567 (7746), p.1-2
Main Author: Gastaldo, Robert A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biodiversity
Climate change
Earth
Endangered & extinct species
Extinction
Fossils
Invertebrates
Mass extinctions
Organic chemistry
Permian
Plant fossils
Plant structures
Pollen
Preservation
Rocks
Sediments
Spores
Terrestrial ecosystems
Vertebrates
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Summary:There are biases in the fossil record of plants, and the invertebrate and vertebrate communities they supported, because the preservation potential of these organisms is highly dependent on the physico-chemical conditions of where they lived6. Spores and pollen are produced annually at logarithmically higher numbers than other plant parts that sit above ground, which favours their preservation in sediments over more easily decayed plant structures. [...]rocks from around the time of the extinction event are notoriously incomplete - sediments from certain times can be missing from ancient rock layers7. Fielding and colleagues report a regional study that uses the plant fossil record of spores, pollen and macrofloral remains in layers of rock from the Sydney Basin, Australia, in which layers from the time of the end-Permian crisis event are reported to be present.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/d41586-019-00744-3