doi: 10.1126/science.1072102.
A tropical rainforest in Colorado 1.4 million years after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary
Affiliations
- PMID: 12089439
- DOI: 10.1126/science.1072102
Item in Clipboard
A tropical rainforest in Colorado 1.4 million years after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary
Science.
.
Abstract
An extremely diverse lower Paleocene (64.1 million years ago) fossil leaf site from Castle Rock, Colorado, contains fossil litter that is similar to the litter of extant equatorial rainforests. The presence of a high-diversity tropical rainforest is unexpected, because other Paleocene floras are species-poor, a feature generally attributed to the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction. The site occurs on the margin of the Denver Basin in synorogenic sedimentary rocks associated with the rise of the Laramide Front Range. Orographic conditions caused by local topography, combined with equable climate, appear to have allowed for the establishment of rainforests within 1.4 million years of the K-T boundary.
Similar articles
-
South American palaeobotany and the origins of neotropical rainforests.Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 Oct 29;359(1450):1595-610. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1531. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004. PMID: 15519975 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Decoupled plant and insect diversity after the end-Cretaceous extinction.Science. 2006 Aug 25;313(5790):1112-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1129569. Science. 2006. PMID: 16931760
-
High plant diversity in Eocene South America: evidence from Patagonia.Science. 2003 Apr 4;300(5616):122-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1080475. Science. 2003. PMID: 12677065
-
Transient floral change and rapid global warming at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary.Science. 2005 Nov 11;310(5750):993-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1116913. Science. 2005. PMID: 16284173
-
Insect-damaged fossil leaves record food web response to ancient climate change and extinction.New Phytol. 2008;178(3):486-502. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2008.02395.x. Epub 2008 Mar 3. New Phytol. 2008. PMID: 18331425 Review.
Cited by
-
Origin and global diversification patterns of tropical rain forests: inferences from a complete genus-level phylogeny of palms.BMC Biol. 2011 Jun 16;9:44. doi: 10.1186/1741-7007-9-44. BMC Biol. 2011. PMID: 21679405 Free PMC article.
-
No post-Cretaceous ecosystem depression in European forests? Rich insect-feeding damage on diverse middle Palaeocene plants, Menat, France.Proc Biol Sci. 2009 Dec 22;276(1677):4271-7. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1255. Epub 2009 Sep 23. Proc Biol Sci. 2009. PMID: 19776074 Free PMC article.
-
Genetic data of museum specimens allow for inferring evolutionary history of the cosmopolitan genus Sirthenea (Heteroptera: Reduviidae).PeerJ. 2019 Apr 10;7:e6640. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6640. eCollection 2019. PeerJ. 2019. PMID: 30993035 Free PMC article.
-
No Consistent Shift in Leaf Dry Mass per Area Across the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary.Front Plant Sci. 2022 Jun 16;13:894690. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.894690. eCollection 2022. Front Plant Sci. 2022. PMID: 35783978 Free PMC article.
-
South American palaeobotany and the origins of neotropical rainforests.Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 Oct 29;359(1450):1595-610. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1531. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004. PMID: 15519975 Free PMC article. Review.
Publication types
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources
