European Palaeobotany and Palynology Conference 2026

Increased occurrences of malformed spores and pollen during several of the mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic suggest that land plants plants were subjected to significant environmental stress during these crises. For the end-Triassic mass extinction, synchronicity between elevated concentrations of Hg in sedimentary successions and increased amounts and severity in malformations of fern spores suggest that Hg emitted from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province contributed to mutations in ferns. Spores from extant plants growing in severely contaminated sites have previously been reported to contain elevated amounts of heavy metals, but it has not been clear where exactly the elements are situated in the spores; whether they are incorporated in the cells only, the walls only or both. In order to investigate whether traces of atmospheric pollution from large igneous province volcanism during the end-Triassic mass extinction is preserved in the fossil fern spores we used synchrotron Nano-XRF to analyse: 1) normal and mutated fossil fern spores from the Triassic-Jurassic boundary succession at Stenlille, Denmark; 2) extant spores from ferns grown on normal and Hg-contaminated soils in a laboratory setting; and 3) spores from a fern collected from a heavily polluted site in Slovakia. Our preliminary results have implications for how elements are differentiated in the spores and highlight the importance of element uptake pathways in fossil spores.