Fossil evidence for Cretaceous escalation in angiosperm leaf vein evolution

dc.creatorFeild, Taylor S.
dc.creatorBrodribb, Timothy J.
dc.creatorIglesias, Ari
dc.creatorChatelet, David S.
dc.creatorBaresch, Andres
dc.creatorUpchurch Jr., Garland R.
dc.creatorGomez, Bernard
dc.creatorMohr, Barbara A. R.
dc.creatorCoiffard, Clement
dc.creatorKvacek, Jiri
dc.creatorJaramillo, Carlos
dc.date2011
dc.date2019-10-25T15:21:18Z
dc.identifierhttp://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/84076
dc.identifierissn:0027-8424
dc.descriptionThe flowering plants that dominate modern vegetation possess leaf gas exchange potentials that far exceed those of all other living or extinct plants. The great divide in maximal ability to exchange CO 2 for water between leaves of nonangiosperms and angiosperms forms the mechanistic foundation for speculation about how angiosperms drove sweeping ecological and biogeochemical change during the Cretaceous. However, there is no empirical evidence that angiosperms evolved highly photosynthetically active leaves during the Cretaceous. Using vein density (D V ) measurements of fossil angiosperm leaves, we show that the leaf hydraulic capacities of angiosperms escalated severalfold during the Cretaceous. During the first 30 million years of angiosperm leaf evolution, angiosperm leaves exhibited uniformly low vein D V that overlapped the D V range of dominant Early Cretaceous ferns and gymnosperms. Fossil angiosperm vein densities reveal a subsequent biphasic increase in D V . During the first mid-Cretaceous surge, angiosperm D V first surpassed the upper bound of D V limits for nonangiosperms. However, the upper limits of D V typical of modern megathermal rainforest trees first appear during a second wave of increased D V during the Cretaceous-Tertiary transition. Thus, our findings provide fossil evidence for the hypothesis that significant ecosystem change brought about by angiosperms lagged behind the Early Cretaceous taxonomic diversification of angiosperms.
dc.descriptionFacultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.format8363-8366
dc.languageen
dc.rightshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
dc.subjectCiencias Naturales
dc.subjectAngiosperm evolution
dc.subjectPlant evolution
dc.subjectTranspiration
dc.subjectTropical rainforest
dc.subjectVenation
dc.titleFossil evidence for Cretaceous escalation in angiosperm leaf vein evolution
dc.typeArticulo
dc.typeArticulo


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