Fossil evidence for a Cretaceous rise of the mahogany family

Abstract

Premise The mahogany family (Meliaceae) is an angiosperm lineage comprising many species that are important elements in tropical ecosystems, and is often used as a study system to understand the evolution of tropical rainforests. While divergence time studies have estimated a Cretaceous origin for the family, no unequivocal fossils of that age have been described. Here, the first Cretaceous evidence for Meliaceae is reported, based on an exceptionally well‐preserved fruit from the Upper Cretaceous (79–72 Ma, Campanian) of North America. Methods The fossil fruit was prepared using traditional paleobotanical techniques. Bayesian phylogenetic analyses using morphological and molecular data were conducted to assess the phylogenetic position of the Cretaceous fruit in Meliaceae and to assess the effect of morphology for inferring the overall pattern of phylogeny for the family. Results The fruit consists of a fleshy mesocarp and a woody endocarp with a hollow center, nine locules, loculicidal sutures, and one subapically attached seed per locule that has an enlarged sarcotesta near the hilum. The combination of characters in this fruit is strikingly similar to the genus Melia L. Phylogenetic analyses recover the Cretaceous fruit as being closely related to Melia and highlights the effect of fruit morphological data for inferring the overall pattern of phylogeny in Meliaceae. There are a few structural differences between the fossil fruit of this study and Melia; thus, the newly characterized Cretaceous taxon is named Manchestercarpa vancouverensis gen. et sp. nov. Discussion These results clearly confirm a Cretaceous origin for Meliaceae and that important tropical families were present prior to the development of modern tropical ecosystems in the Cenozoic.

Sunda–Sahul floristic exchange and pathways into the Southwest Pacific: New insights from wet tropical forest trees

“…Meliaceae comprise c. 740 validly described, accepted tree and shrublet species, taxonomically arranged in 58 genera (Muellner‐Riehl & Rojas‐Andrés, 2021). The estimated crown age of Meliaceae dates back to the Late Cretaceous, based on phylogenetic approaches (Koenen et al, 2015: 80.4 million years ago, Ma, 95% probability interval 69.1–91.6 Ma; Muellner‐Riehl et al, 2016: 79.6 Ma, 95% probability interval 69.66–89.77 Ma; Joyce et al, 2023: 86.3 Ma, 95% probability interval 72.27–97.74 Ma or 109 Ma, 95% probability interval 89.1–131.5 Ma) which is also in line with the oldest known fossil in the family ( Manchestercarpa vancouverensis Atkinson (72–79 Ma); Atkinson, 2020). Best represented in terms of both abundance and species numbers in the region within Meliaceae is Dysoxylum s.l., the target group of our study, composed of Dysoxylum s.s. (28 species), Didymocheton (43 species), Epicharis (seven species), Goniocheton (four species), Prasoxylon (seven species) and Pseudocarapa (six species) (Holzmeyer et al, 2021).…”

Evolution of reproductive traits in the mahagony family (Meliaceae)

“…18; see also Devecchi et al, 2018). A recent finding of a fossil of a permineralized fruit assignable to a Meliaceae from the Upper Cretaceous (79‐72 Ma, Campanian) of western North America is consistent with this hypothesis: The fruit consists of a fleshy mesocarp and a thick woody endocarp, hence a drupe, and is the first evidence of Meliaceae from the Cretaceous and is among the earliest representatives of the order Sapindales (Atkinson, 2020). As we previously discussed, a septifragal capsule appears as a synapomorphy of the Cedreloideae clade (Fig.…”

Biogeography of Neotropical Meliaceae: geological connections, fossil and molecular evidence revisited

“…The work by Muellner et al (2006) thus supported the idea that the entry of megathermal (frost-intolerant) angiosperms into southern continents from Oligocene to Pliocene must be considered as an important means of establishing modern pantropical distribution patterns. It is worth to note here that indeed the currently oldest known fossil of Meliaceae is an exceptionally well-preserved fruit from the Upper Cretaceous (79-72 Ma, Campanian) of North America (Atkinson 2020). A family-scale macroevolutionary study by Koenen et al (2015), focusing on temporal dynamics of evolution of rainforest clades within Meliaceae, suggested that these rainforest clades diversified from the Late Oligocene or Early Miocene onwards, and that most species-level diversity of Meliaceae in rainforests was rather recent.…”