China News Service, Kunming, August 12th. The reporter learned from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on the 12th that the research on the fossils of single seed beans carried out by the palaeoecology research group of the garden revealed that Paleogene Tibet was a hub for the exchange of flora in the northern hemisphere.
According to reports, the monoseed bean is an extinct genus of the leguminous family. It has a rich fossil record in Eurasia and can be traced back to the Eocene.
However, the lack of fossil records in some key regions, such as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, has made the understanding of the species diversity and biogeographic evolution of this genus far from sufficient.
The picture shows a new fossil of the genus Monosaccharide discovered in the Lunpola Basin of Tibet-Tibetan monosaccharides, and the restoration map of the genus Monosaccharides.
Photo courtesy of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences
The Paleoecology Research Group of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences has been conducting paleobotanical research in the central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for a long time.
Through the study of the pod fruit fossils found in it, through numerical analysis of morphology and geometric shape, a new species was established: Tibetan monoseed bean, which is different from the fossil species of monoseed bean that has been published by predecessors. Lateral asymmetry, fruit beak olecranon, fruit base obviously inclined.
Xizang Danzidou is the earliest fossil record of this genus on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau so far, and this discovery indicates that the genus has existed in the central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau since the Late Eocene.
A comprehensive analysis of fossil evidence and model simulations indicates that the genus may have originated in East Asia, spread to the central valley of Tibet in the late Eocene, and then spread westward to Europe through a low-latitude path along the island chain of the Neo-Tethys Ocean. ; The distribution pattern of this genus in geological time is closely related to the history of global climate change.
This finding further supports that the central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was an important hub for the exchange of global Paleogene flora.
The picture shows the principal component analysis and shape variation of fruit shape of the genus Monoseed.
Photo courtesy of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Related research was published in Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology under the title of "Podocarpium(Fabaceae) from the late Eocene of central Tibetan Plateau and its biogeographic implication" to celebrate the 90th birthday of academician Zhou Zhiyan, a famous Chinese paleobotanist birthday album.
Li Wei, a master student in the paleoecology group, became the first author, and researcher Su Tao and associate researcher Huang Jian were the co-corresponding authors of the paper.
This achievement was funded by the Strategic Pilot Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Second Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Comprehensive Scientific Expedition Research Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Province.
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