54-13 Quantitative Traits from the Archives: Deriving Extinct Plant Water Transport Strategies from Historic Paleobotanical Collections

Session: New Approaches to Old Fossil Collections

Presenting Author:

Jonathan Wilson

Authors:

Wilson, Jonathan P.¹, Matthaeus, William J.², White, Joseph Daniel³, Peppe, Daniel J.⁴, Jones, Wray⁵, Cross, Owen⁶, Hametz-Berner, Rebecca⁷, Hornum, Shoshi⁸, Mattison, Wyatt⁹, McElwain, Jennifer¹⁰

(1) Haverford College, Department of Environmental Studies, Haverford, PA, USA, (2) Trinity College Dublin, Discipline of Botany, Dublin, Ireland, (3) Baylor University, Department of Biology, Waco, TX, USA, (4) Baylor University, Department of Geosciences, Waco, TX, USA, (5) Baylor University, Department of Geosciences, Waco, TX, USA, (6) Haverford College, Department of Environmental Studies, Haverford, PA, USA, (7) Haverford College, Department of Environmental Studies, Haverford, PA, USA, (8) Haverford College, Department of Environmental Studies, Haverford, PA, USA, (9) Haverford College, Department of Environmental Studies, Haverford, PA, USA, (10) Trinity College Dublin, Discipline of Botany, Dublin, Ireland,

Abstract:

Plants are a key interface in the Earth system, modulating hydrology, nutrient cycles, and surface properties such as albedo through their physiological activity, growth, and development.  Because evolution has shaped these plant properties, the representation of geological-age-appropriate vegetation in ecosystem and climate models is critically important for the examination of environmental change over geologic time. The last >400 million years of plant evolution has recorded paradigm shifts in plant anatomical traits in response to adaptation to environmental conditions. The disparity between extinct traits and living traits challenges the validity of extrapolating past ecosystem function from observations made using living plants. Major plant environmental resistances (i.e., to drought and frost) in deep-time ecosystems are expected to be different because extinct organisms contained anatomical features with no living analog, but these properties can be derived directly from fossilized plant anatomy. Historical collections from research universities and museum collections contain rare glimpses into the plants that occupied locations that are now inaccessible, or even lost to scientific examination. Advances in digital photography and quantitative methods enable the functional investigation of the diversity of past plant life.

 

Analysis of more than 50,000 fossilized xylem cells, from a range of collections (e.g., the Henry Andrews Macrofossil Collection, the Peabody Natural History Museum, the NMNH), spanning nearly 400 million years of evolutionary time, shows several patterns. First and foremost, rapid, convergent, and repeated evolution of increased hydraulic conductivity is observed at several periods in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras, often followed by selection for water transport durability and stress resistance (e.g., drought stress, frost stress). Second, the broad-scale and long-term change in Earth system climate from the end of the Carboniferous Period until the Cretaceous super-greenhouse narrows the hydraulic ecospace occupied by seed plants—until the evolution of vessel-bearing angiosperms. Finally, the role of major geobiological perturbations, including the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse and the Permian-Triassic and Triassic-Jurassic mass extinctions, likely played significant roles in shaping the plant hydraulic landscape. Additional exploration of these patterns and their effect(s) on ecosystem processes like water transport and evapotranspiration in deep time will shed light on changes in key geobiological levers within the Earth system.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-8273

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