Cenozoic plants from Tibet: An extraordinary decade of discovery, understanding and implications

Molecular phylogeny of mega-diverse Carabus attests late Miocene evolution of alpine environments in the Himalayan–Tibetan Orogen

“…Consequently, the crown group age of this clade can be used to date the minimum age of alpine environments in the area of origin of the crown group (synapomorphy based approach). Due to uncertainties regarding lapse rates and regional temperature regimes during deep times, paleoelevations cannot be derived directly from vertical distributions of the recent species 2 , 94 . Therefore, we translate our paleoenvironmental scenarios into paleoelevational estimations in those cases where paleoelevational scenarios exist from the literature for the same part of the HTO and geological period as our data.…”

Megafossils of Betulaceae from the Oligocene of Qaidam Basin and their paleoenvironmental and phytogeographic implications

“…Researchers have made explored the molecular phylogenetic and biogeographic history of the Tibetan Plateau based on modern species from this region ( Renner, 2016 ; Ding et al., 2020 ). In recent years, several hypotheses have been proposed on the biogeographic significance of the Tibetan Plateau: Into Tibet, Out of Tibet, Out of India, and Into and Out of Africa ( Deng et al., 2011 ; Wen et al., 2014 ; Zhou et al., 2022 ). Most of these were proposed to explain the biogeographical connections between the Tibetan Plateau and other regions during the Neogene or Quaternary.…”

“…Recently, fossil assemblages from the middle Eocene of central Tibet indicated a relatively free floristic exchange across the Northern Hemisphere ( Su et al., 2020 ). Fossil plants collected from different strata in Tibet indicate extensive biogeographical connections with other floras of the Northern Hemisphere and make Tibet a crossroad for global floristic exchange in the Paleogene ( Zhou et al., 2022 ). It is crucial to reconstruct the pathways for the floristic linkage between the Tibetan Plateau and other Northern Hemisphere regions during the Paleogene ( Tang et al., 2019 ).…”