Early Paleogene Arctic terrestrial ecosystems affected by the change of polar hydrology under global warming: Implications for modern climate change at high latitudes

A new method to prepare clean cuticular membrane from fossil leaves with thin and fragile cuticles

“…First, although Metasequoia is a conifer, its deciduous habit makes its cuticles, particularly the lower cuticles, much thinner and more fragile than those of other evergreen conifers, making it difficult to prepare large pieces of clean cuticular membranes from fossil leaves. Second, with a continuous and widely distributed fossil record dated back to the Late Cretaceous in the Northern Hemisphere [14][15][16], and even more importantly, with a representative species (M. glyptostroboides Hu et Cheng) still living in its native land in Southwest-central China [17,18], Metasequoia has long been used as an effective paleoclimatic proxy for the past 100 million years of the Earth history [19][20][21][22][23][24].…”