Abstract

The monospecific fern genus Cystodium (Cystodiaceae; Polypodiales) occurs exclusively in the tropical forests of the Malay Archipelago, the Admiralty Islands, the Louisiade Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands. Divergence time estimates suggest that the genus originated in the Mesozoic; however, fossil evidence to validate this suggestion has been lacking. Amber from Myanmar (Burmese amber) is an important source of new information on the diversity of vascular cryptogams in the Cretaceous. This paper describes the fossil taxon Cystodium sorbifolioides nov. sp. based on a fragment of a fertile leaf preserved in Burmese amber that represents the first fossil evidence of the family Cystodiaceae. Cystodium sorbifolioides is used to obtain a minimum age estimate for the Cystodiaceae and the closely related, monogeneric Lonchitidaceae and Lindsaeaceae. The fossil strengthens the hypothesis that the forest ecosystems of Malesia and Melanesia represent refugia for many tropical plant lineages that originated in the Cretaceous.

Details

Title
A fossil species of the enigmatic early polypod fern genus Cystodium (Cystodiaceae) in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar
Author
Regalado, Ledis 1 ; Schmidt, Alexander R 2 ; Appelhans, Marc S 3 ; Bork Ilsemann 4 ; Schneider, Harald 5 ; Krings, Michael 6 ; Heinrichs, Jochen 7 

 Ludwig Maximilian University, Faculty of Biology, Department of Biology and Geobio-Center, Munich, Germany; Instituto de Ecología y Sistemática, Carretera de Varona 11835 e/ Oriente y Lindero, La Habana, Cuba 
 University of Göttingen, Department of Geobiology, Göttingen, Germany 
 University of Göttingen, Albrecht-von-Haller Institute for Plant Sciences, Department of Systematics, Biodiversity and Evolution of Plants, Göttingen, Germany 
 SNSB-Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, München, Germany 
 Center for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Menglun, Mengla, Yunnan, China; Natural History Museum, Department of Life Science, London, UK 
 SNSB-Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, München, Germany; Ludwig Maximilians University, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Palaeontology and Geobiology, München, Germany 
 Ludwig Maximilian University, Faculty of Biology, Department of Biology and Geobio-Center, Munich, Germany 
Pages
1-9
Publication year
2017
Publication date
Nov 2017
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1985627701
Copyright
© 2017. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.