When did the mistletoe family Loranthaceae become extinct in Tasmania? Review and conjecture

Evolution of pollen morphology in Loranthaceae

“…The pollen grains of Muellerina eucalyptoides from Australia are distinct from all other Lorantheae and remarkably similar to pollen grains of Gaiadendron punctatum (Gaiadendreae; Figure 11) and ‘ Struthanthus ’ mapirensis Rusby (a likely Gaiadendron ; see ‘Discussion’) from South America. So far, only a single grain of Muellerina has been published in LM (Macphail et al 2012). Another image can be found in the Australasian pollen and spore atlas (http://apsa.anu.edu.au).…”

“…If we assume that the currently accepted root (Vidal-Russell & Nickrent 2008b; Su et al 2015) is correct, Type B would need to have evolved at least six times from the (more) ancestral Type A pollen (e.g. within the root parasitic lineages, the Psittacantheae, the Elytrantheae and the Lorantheae), and at least once convergently in the Paleogene (Macphail et al 2012; based on divergence estimates by Vidal-Russell & Nickrent 2008a). An interesting analogy to Type A vs.…”

Eocene Loranthaceae pollen pushes back divergence ages for major splits in the family

“…Muller, 1981; Song, Wang & Huang, 2004; Macphail et al, 2012). Also, the phytogeographic history of the family is based merely on the present distribution of its genera (e.g.…”

Assessing the Fossil Record of Asterids in the Context of Our Current Phylogenetic Framework1

“…This order is relatively well represented in the fossil record, based on pollen of Loranthaceae, with examples of extant genera recognizable back to the early Eocene in the Southern Hemisphere (Macphail et al, 2012) and middle Eocene of the Northern Hemisphere (Zetter et al, 2014). Loranthaceous pollen has distinctive triangular oblate grains that are typically concave sided and syncolpate, with distinctive variation in ornamentation and aperture configuration among genera (e.g., Feuer & Kuijt, 1980, 1985).…”