Oldest fruit of Phyllanthaceae from the Deccan Intertrappean Beds of Singpur, Madhya Pradesh, India

Kapgate, Dashrath K.; Manchester, Steven R.; Stuppy, Wolfgang

doi:10.1515/acpa-2017-0004

Cited by 16 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Thus, the discovery of present and previously reported coryphoid palm megafossils of different organs, namely, leaves ( Srivastava et al., 2014 ; Roy et al., 2021 ), petioles ( Trivedi and Verma, 1981 ), leaf bases ( Bonde et al., 2000 ), stems ( Mahabale, 1958 ; Lakhanpal et al., 1979 ; Ambwani, 1983 ; Ambwani and Mehrotra, 1989 ; Gayakwad and Patil, 1989 ; Bonde et al., 2008 ; Khan et al., 2020a ) and fruits ( Bande et al., 1982 ) is generally taken to indicate a warm and humid tropical climate prevailed across what is now Madhya Pradesh, central India, during Late Cretaceous-early Paleocene times. This suggested paleoclimatic condition is also supported by earlier published qualitative paleoclimatic reconstruction using nearest living relatives (NLR) analysis ( Srivastava, 2010 ; Prasad et al., 2013 ; Srivastava and Srivastava, 2014 ; Manchester et al., 2016 ; Baas et al., 2017 ; Kapgate et al., 2017 ; Khan et al., 2019 ; Smith et al., 2021 ) and quantitative paleoclimatic data using Climate Leaf Analysis Multivariate Program (CLAMP) analysis ( Bhatia et al., 2021 ). The CLAMP-derived results based on physiognomic features of woody dicot fossil leaf assemblages of the same fossil locality predict a mean annual temperature of 23.4 °C ± 2.3 °C; a cold month mean temperature of 17.2 °C ± 3.5 °C, a warm month mean temperature of 28.1 °C ± 2.9 °C, a relative humidity of 75.6% ± 10.1% and a growing season precipitation of 2320 mm ± 643 mm during Late Cretaceous-early Paleocene time ( Bhatia et al., 2021 ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Coryphoid palms from the K-Pg boundary of central India and their biogeographical implications: Evidence from megafossil remains

Kumar¹,

Hazra²,

Spicer³

et al. 2023

Plant Diversity

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Coryphoid palms from the K-Pg boundary of central India and their biogeographical implications: Evidence from megafossil remains

Kumar¹,

Hazra²,

Spicer³

et al. 2023

Plant Diversity

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“…The reproductive record of Euphorbiaceae fossils, coupled with silicified fruits of the closely related family Phyllanthaceae from the Deccan Traps (Kapgate et al, 2017), shows that the Euphorbiaceae must have diverged by the Late Cretaceous, broadly consistent with molecular divergence‐age estimates (van Ee et al, 2008; Xi et al, 2012; Ramírez‐Barahona et al, 2020). Furthermore, the extant subfamilies apparently diverged and became widely distributed by the Paleogene.…”

mentioning

confidence: 64%

The first Gondwanan Euphorbiaceae fossils reset the biogeographic history of the Macaranga‐Mallotus clade

Wilf

Iglesias

Gandolfo

2023

American J of Botany

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Premise: The spurge family Euphorbiaceae is prominent in tropical rainforests worldwide, particularly in Asia. There is little consensus on the biogeographic origins of the family or its principal lineages. No confirmed spurge macrofossils have come from Gondwana. Methods: We describe the first Gondwanan macrofossils of Euphorbiaceae, represented by two infructescences and associated peltate leaves from the early Eocene (52 Myr ago [Ma]) Laguna del Hunco site in Chubut, Argentina. Results: The infructescences are panicles bearing tiny, pedicellate, spineless capsular fruits with two locules, two axile lenticular seeds, and two unbranched, plumose stigmas. The fossils' character combination only occurs today in some species of the Macaranga-Mallotus clade (MMC; Euphorbiaceae), a widespread Old-World understory group often thought to have tropical Asian origins. The associated leaves are consistent with extant Macaranga. Conclusions: The new fossils are the oldest known for the MMC, demonstrating its Gondwanan history and marking its divergence by at least 52 Ma. This discovery makes an Asian origin of the MMC unlikely because immense oceanic distances separated Asia and South America 52 Ma. The only other MMC reproductive fossils so far known are also from the southern hemisphere (early Miocene, southern New Zealand), far from the Asian tropics. The MMC, along with many other Gondwanan survivors, most likely entered Asia during the Neogene Sahul-Sunda collision. Our discovery adds to a substantial series of well-dated, well-preserved fossils from one undersampled region, Patagonia, that have changed our understanding of plant biogeographic history.

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“…Our results differ from previous analyses (e.g. Huegele & Manchester, 2020; Manchester et al ., 2013; Kapgate, Manchester & Stuppy, 2017; Matsunaga et al ., 2018, 2019; Smith et al ., 2021; Hayes et al ., 2018; Atkinson, Stockey & Rothwell, 2016; Stockey, Nishida & Atkinson, 2016) in several aspects, partly due to addition of new data and partly due to the expanded spatial scope of this study, which allows comparison of patterns at mid‐ to high palaeolatitudes with those from low palaeolatitudes. Firstly, we find that angiosperm fleshy fruit size increased sharply after the mid‐Cretaceous, followed by an extended interval of relatively little change in median fleshy fruit size and interquartile range from the Campanian onwards (Tables 1 and 2, Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of variation in fleshy diaspore size and abundance from Late Triassic–Oligocene

Naware,

Benson

2023

Biological Reviews

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Vertebrate‐mediated seed dispersal is a common attribute of many living plants, and variation in the size and abundance of fleshy diaspores is influenced by regional climate and by the nature of vertebrate seed dispersers among present‐day floras. However, potential drivers of large‐scale variation in the abundance and size distributions of fleshy diaspores through geological time, and the importance of geographic variation, are incompletely known. This knowledge gap is important because fleshy diaspores are a key mechanism of energy transfer from photosynthesis to animals and may in part explain the diversification of major groups within birds and mammals. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain variation in the abundance and size distribution of fleshy diaspores through time, including plant–frugivore co‐evolution, angiosperm diversification, and changes in vegetational structure and climate. We present a new data set of more than 800 georeferenced fossil diaspore occurrences spanning the Triassic–Oligocene, across low to mid‐ to high palaeolatitudes. We use this to quantify patterns of long‐term change in fleshy diaspores, examining the timing and geographical context of important shifts as a test of the potential evolutionary and climatic explanations. We find that the fleshy fruit sizes of angiosperms increased for much of the Cretaceous, during the early diversification of angiosperms from herbaceous ancestors with small fruits. Nevertheless, this did not cause a substantial net change in the fleshy diaspore size distributions across seed plants, because gymnosperms had achieved a similar size distribution by at least the Late Triassic. Furthermore, gymnosperm‐dominated Mesozoic ecosystems were mostly open, and harboured low proportions of specialised frugivores until the latest Cretaceous, suggesting that changes in vegetation structure and plant–frugivore co‐evolution were probably not important drivers of fleshy diaspore size distributions over long timescales. Instead, fleshy diaspore size distributions may be largely constrained by physical or life‐history limits that are shared among groups and diversify as a plant group expands into different growth forms/sizes, habitats, and climate regimes. Mesozoic gymnosperm floras had a low abundance of fleshy diaspores (<50% fleshy diaspore taxa), that was surpassed by some low‐latitude angiosperm floras in the Cretaceous. Eocene angiosperm floras show a mid‐ to high latitude peak in fleshy fruit abundance, with very high proportions of fleshy fruits that even exceed those seen at low latitudes both in the Eocene and today. Mid‐ to high latitude proportions of fleshy fruits declined substantially over the Eocene–Oligocene transition, resulting in a shift to more modern‐like geographic distributions with the highest proportion of fleshy fruits occurring in low‐latitude tropical assemblages. This shift was coincident with global cooling and the onset of Southern Hemisphere glaciation, suggesting that rapid cooling at mid‐ and high latitudes caused a decrease in availability of the climate conditions most favourable for fleshy fruits in angiosperms. Future research could be focused on examining the environmental niches of modern fleshy fruits, and the potential effects of climate change on fleshy fruit and frugivore diversity.

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Oldest fruit of Phyllanthaceae from the Deccan Intertrappean Beds of Singpur, Madhya Pradesh, India

Cited by 16 publications

References 6 publications

Coryphoid palms from the K-Pg boundary of central India and their biogeographical implications: Evidence from megafossil remains

Coryphoid palms from the K-Pg boundary of central India and their biogeographical implications: Evidence from megafossil remains

The first Gondwanan Euphorbiaceae fossils reset the biogeographic history of the Macaranga‐Mallotus clade

Patterns of variation in fleshy diaspore size and abundance from Late Triassic–Oligocene

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