Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2440/48203
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Type: Journal article
Title: Seed ferns survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction in Tasmania
Author: McLoughlin, S.
Carpenter, R.
Jordan, G.
Hill, R.
Citation: American Journal of Botany, 2008; 95(4):465-471
Publisher: Botanical Soc Amer Inc
Issue Date: 2008
ISSN: 0002-9122
1537-2197
Statement of
Responsibility: 
McLoughlin, S and Carpenter, RJ and Jordan, GJ and Hill, RS
Abstract: Seed ferns, dominant elements of the vegetation in many parts of the world from the Triassic to Cretaceous, were considered to have disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous together with several other groups that had occupied key positions in terrestrial and marine ecosystems such as dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, and ammonoids. Seed-fern demise is generally correlated with competition from diversifying flowering plants through the Cretaceous and the global environmental crisis related to the Chicxulub impact event in the paleotropics at the end of the period. New fossils from Tasmania show that one seed-fern lineage survived into the Cenozoic by at least 13 million years. These fossils are described here as a new species, Komlopteris cenozoicus. Komlopteris is a genus of seed ferns attributed to Corystospermaceae and until now was not known from sediments younger than the Early Cretaceous. Discovery of this "Lazarus taxon," together with the presence of a range of other relictual fossil and extant organisms in Tasmania, other southern Gondwanan provinces, and some regions of northern North America and Asia, underscores high-latitude regions as biodiversity refugia during global environmental crises and highlights their importance as sources of postextinction radiations
Keywords: Australia
Corystospermaceae
Eocene
extinction
Komlopteris
refugia
seed ferns
Tasmania
Description: Copyright © 2008 Botanical Society of America
DOI: 10.3732/ajb.95.4.465
Grant ID: ARC
Published version: http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/4/465
Appears in Collections:Aurora harvest 6
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