European Palaeobotany and Palynology Conference 2026

3D-printed pollen models have been extensively used in research, education and outreach. Wilson (2023) introduced the 3D Pollen Project using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) to produce accurate series of tightly-focused cross-section images through pollen grains, then produced 3D-printable surface files. Here I present 3D-printed pollen models for over 50 Chinese plant species (MPV...

The Aptian–Albian transition (c. 113 Ma) represents a major upheaval in global vegetation with the rapid distribution and diversification of angiosperms. In southern England, this interval is represented by the Lower Greensand Group (c. 119-112 Ma), a series of shoreline/nearshore deposits derived from the London-Brabant landmass – the youngest and last truly known terrestrial sediments...

Palynological studies of core and ditch-cutting samples from the A1-161-04 Well, Murzuq Basin, SW Libya, yielded rich palynomorph taxa (Sporomorphs, chitinozoans, acritarchs and prasinophytes) enabled to established a Paleozoic palynostratigraphic framework for environmental interpretation and regional correlation using established Carboniferous, Devonian, and Ordovician biozonation...

We report the first systematic description of Permian plant macrofossils from the Lower Permian Gipshuken Formation on Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Arctic Norway. Several conifer shoots from a fossil plant horizon in the lower Vengeberget member are assigned to the genus Quadrocladus. The plant-bearing interval occurs within stacked anhydrite–dolomite–marl successions of the Vengeberget member that...

The occurrence of plant fossils on oceanic islands has been reported in numerous archipelagoes worldwide, although these records remain typically understudied. This is also the case for the Canary Islands, where palaeobotanical research is still limited. In addition, most of this research has been focused on the fossil localities from Gran Canaria Island, being the plant fossil record from the...

The Borkowice-Radestów ceramic clay mine in Borkowice village is located near Przysucha in the Holy Cross Mountains subbasin in Poland. The exposed sediments belong to the middle-upper part of the late Hettangian Przysucha ore-bearing Formation and represent marginal marine sediments of barrier–lagoon origin. The sample gathered from kaolinitic clays, provided by the late prof. G. Pieńkowski,...

The upper member of the Saq Formation (Sajir Member) of Saudi Arabia is characterized, in its upper part, by strongly bioturbated, medium to fine-grained sandstones with intercalations of matrix-supported conglomerates passing upwards to laminated mudstones. At outcrop, these beds are relatively rich in fossils including trace fossils, lingulids and graptolites, which indicate a Dapingian to...

The study investigated climatic and ecological stress of selected gymnosperms from the Upper Triassic (Norian) to the Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian), in samples collected from eight sites representing the Norian, Hettangian, Bathonian, and Kimmeridgian stages. Carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope ratios were measured to evaluate environmental stress and nitrogen availability in different...

This study presents a new morphotype of lignified leaves from the South Bohemian basins. New material consisting of leaf fragments from the Coniacian of the Klikov Formation come from a drill core in vicinity of České Velenice. The Klikov Formation is 350 m thick, primarily filled with material of fluvial origin consisting of fossil leaves, charcoalified mesofossils and silicified tree trunks....

Solar ultraviolet-B radiation (UV-B, wavelengths 280–315 nm) has fundamental influence on terrestrial biological processes, due to its characters of high energetic, ability of breaking chemical bonds, and damage to DNA and cell membranes. The ultraviolet absorbing compounds (UACs) in palynomorphs act as key protective components against the deleterious effects of UV-B radiation and have been...

Pollen is the most common terrestrial fossil with extensive use in paleoenvironmental and palaeoecological studies. Given that pollen from anemophilous taxa can be transported considerable distances there is a need to assess how well the niche of taxa can be modelled using pollen distribution data. The aim of this study is to test whether pollen records can be used in niche models to predict...

The first Carex L. fossils from Macaronesian archipelagos were found in 1859, within the 1.3 Ma (Late Pleistocene) Porto da Cruz sediments (PdCs) in Madeira Island. These were described by O. Heer (1809-1883) in 1864, as belonging to two taxa: i) ‘1. Carex?’: based on leaf and isolated achene fossils morphologically similar to “C. myosuroides Lowe”(nom. illeg.), an extant plant recently...

During the Late Triassic, forests in the Central European Basin developed under a seasonal subtropical climate. Although fossil wood from this interval is abundant, its paleoclimatic and paleoecological significance has so far remained largely unexplored. Here we investigate a silicified log and associated wood fragments from the Löwenstein Formation near Bayreuth in southeastern Germany....

Here we present coccolith imprint, or “ghost”, fossils preserved on the surfaces of palynomorphs. These unusual fossils have now been found on pollen, dinoflagellate cysts, prasinophyte algae, and acritarchs (in this case, probably green algae). Following a review of, to our knowledge, all known reports of coccolith imprints, we show that these fossils occur globally and have been found in...

Wildfires were widespread in terrestrial Cretaceous ecosystems on a global scale. As the product of incomplete combustion, charcoal is chemically inert and highly insusceptible to microbial decay, making it an exceptional medium for reconstructing the taxonomic composition of floras affected by wildfires. During the Early Cretaceous, a ‘high-fire’ period of Earth’s history, a complex...

Cycads are the extant gymnosperm clade with the greatest ecological diversity, with species adapted to deserts, mangroves, and wet tropical forests. They display a wide range of growth forms, including subterranean stems, aerial trunks, and even epiphytic habits, as in Zamia pseudoparasitica. Cycads are also exceptional among gymnosperms for their high level of insect pollination. Recent...

Ginkgoales were an important component of Mesozoic floras, yet their modern diversity is restricted to the single living species Ginkgo biloba L. The long evolutionary history and conservative leaf architecture of this group make fossil ginkgoaleans valuable for exploring plant diversity, morphological persistence and environmental adaptation through geological time. Here, we present a...

The bryophyte fossil record is notoriously scarce due to different biases, most of which are associated with their size and the lack of researchers specialized in this group. Among the ~650 fossil bryophyte taxa recognized to date, hornworts (Anthocerotophyta) are represented by only four taxa, of which two are only tentatively assigned to the group. Here we report new fossil hornwort...

Algae represent an exceptionally diverse assemblage of organisms that belong to evolutionarily distinct lineages. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of fossil algae from the Cenozoic sedimentary strata to date. In this research, we present the first evidence of three multicellular algal specimens from the Miocene: i) tree-like, branched algae akin to contemporary Cladophora Kütz....

A small filicalean stem, Tubicaulis weiningensis sp. nov., was discovered in the Late Permian Emeishan Basalt Formation of western Guizhou, China. It represents the first record of this genus in the Cathaysian Flora. The new fossil consists of a large central stem surrounded by a few petiole bases and adventitious roots. The stele is an ectophloic dictyoxylic siphonostele with a few leaf...

Palynology and palynofacies are central to stratigraphic and palaeoenvironmental interpretation of the Middle Jurassic Brent Group, one of the main reservoir intervals of the North Sea. However, several parts of the succession are dominated by anomalous palynological assemblages, including leiosphaerid-like forms, indeterminate spheromorphs, degraded bisaccate-like structures, and...

In recent years, variations in acritarch morphotypes and morphological parameters, particularly process (appendage) length, have been studied to understand the palaeoecology of acritarchs and environmental changes, for example, salinity, temperature, and oxygenation. The acritarchs from the Early-Middle Ordovician of the island of Öland, Sweden, have been studied with a focus on taxonomy and...

Dinoflagellates play a key role in marine ecosystems and are known for producing organic-walled cysts (dinocysts), which are valuable for reconstructing paleoceanic and climatic variability. Analyses using Attenuated Total Reflection Micro–Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR–micro FTIR) have identified the molecular structure of dinosporin, the primary constituent of the dinocyst...

Ecosystem- and Climate change are politically important and exciting topics of particular public interest. Palaeoclimate analyses play a crucial role when differentiating between anthropogenically and ‘natural’ climate change. In popular media, results of such analyses are often reflected in a simplified, confusing, or even altered way. Particularly the methods behind presented...

Estimating plant diversity through geological time is confounded by several biases. These can arise from the structure of databases as well as from the nature of plant fossils. Occurrence-based databases such as the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) record successful fossil sampling, and therefore cannot distinguish between true absence and false fossil absence caused by missing rock record. In...

The Barremian fossil site of Las Hoyas (Cuenca, Spain) constitutes one of the most relevant Konservat-Lagerstätten for the study of Early Cretaceous continental ecosystems, standing out for the exceptional preservation of its biota. In this context, the palaeobotanical record provides a unique opportunity to address the palaeoecological reconstruction of the wetland system, particularly...

The extraordinary biodiversity of the Amazon is the product of complex, deep-time interactions between Andean tectonics, climate and biota. The Miocene is a particularly important interval in this history, characterized by ongoing landscape reorganization that gave rise to a western Amazonian mega-wetland (the Pebas system). This system transitioned into the fluvio-lacustrine Acre system and...

Poręba is an Upper Silesian Late Triassic locality containing numerous well-preserved macro- and microremains of plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates. The sediments belong to the upper part of the Patoka Member of the Grabowa Formation and were deposited in a braided river system under a monsoonal climate regime. The fragmented preservation of the remains indicates relatively long...

Lueckisporites virkkiae Potonié et Klaus 1954 emend. Clarke 1965 is a distinctive Permian taeniate bisaccate pollen. It is characterised by a smooth corpus, two well-developed sacci, and two prominent proximal taeniae associated with a monolete-like sulcus. Its botanical affinity, historically linked to several conifers, is consistent with Majonicaceae. Since its original definition, the...

The fossil record from the high-latitude realm in the Late Devonian is less well known than contemporary Euramerican deposits. With a global distribution in the Devonian, Lycopsida form an important component of any flora, for which the South African Witpoort Formation is no exception. Unusual, remarkable specimens have the potential to offer not only palaeobiogeographic information, but...

Keywords: Angiosperms, Paleoecology, Palynostratigraphy, Phytogeography, Western Tethys

The Late Cretaceous witnessed a major ecological radiation of angiosperms, marking a fundamental transition from gymnosperm-dominated to angiosperm-dominated terrestrial ecosystems. Despite its significance, the European paleobotanical record for the Coniacian–Santonian interval remains scarce, largely...

Cathaya, the sister taxon to Pinus, is one of the most endangered plants endemic to China. The single extant species, C. argyrophylla, survives only on open slopes and ridges in the subtropical mountainous regions of southwestern China. Although Cathaya macrofossils have been reported from several sites across the Northern Hemisphere, they have not been recorded previously from China....

The Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, ca. 56 Ma) was a short (200 ky) and major global warming event characterized by a temperature increase of 5 to 8°C and a profound impact on diversity, biogeographic distribution and extinction patterns. The two fossiliferous sites of Rivecourt (56 Ma) and Le Quesnoy (ca. 55 Ma) located in the Paris Basin (Oise, France) provide a valuable opportunity...

The Lusitanian Basin, Portugal has long been an area of focus for studying the diversification of angiosperms in the Early Cretaceous. Coastal outcrop sections from Ericeira have been stratigraphically well-constrained using updated strontium isotope stratigraphy and are thus useful for examining the very early incursions of angiosperms into a gymnosperm dominated habitat. This study examines...

Palynological analysis of the Falcão-1 well provides new insights into depositional environments and sediment sourcing offshore São Tomé from the Late Cretaceous to Oligocene. Quantitative palynodata are consistently well recovered from cuttings, despite moderate to poor preservation linked to transport-related abrasion.

The Palaeogene succession (Late Palaeocene–Late Oligocene) is...

During the early Toarcian (~183 Ma), volcanogenic outgassing from the Karoo–Ferrar Large Igneous Province perturbed the global carbon cycle, culminating in the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE). In the Neo-Tethyan realm, this interval is globally tracked by a prominent negative δ¹³C excursion at the base of the Dactylioceras (E.) elegantulum Zone. While the marine expressions of the T-OAE,...

Wildfire risk is increasing worldwide, and the way global peatlands interact with fire has changed throughout the Anthropocene. The UK’s “peatscapes” (interconnected landscapes dominated by peat-forming ecosystems) are extensive, carbon-rich stores that support unique biodiversity, yet they are highly sensitive to environmental change. Anthropogenic impacts, such as land-use change and...

The Lusitanian Basin (western Portugal) comprises an extensive Cretaceous sequence with well-preserved plant fossils that provides a unique insight into the initial radiation of angiosperms during the Early Cretaceous. Several studies on leaf floras and plant mesofossils from the Portuguese sequence have been more systematically oriented, while palynological studies have to a large extend been...

Lepidodendron is among the best known and most iconic fossil plant taxa, with its life restorations being a staple of palaeobotanical art since the 1800s. Despite its ubiquitousness in Carboniferous environmental and landscape reconstructions, the significant advances in our anatomical understanding of this taxon are rarely represented in paleoart, with memetic copies of a few influential...

In the 1840s, H. Goeppert described the first Triassic flora from the Kluczbork area (Biadacz, Dobieracice, Gosław, Maciejów) in present-day Poland, although he initially interpreted its age as Jurassic. Additional specimens were later collected by F. Roemer, who assigned the flora to the Late Triassic (Rhaetian). The flora consists mainly of horsetails, seed ferns, and bennettitaleans, with...

Seagrasses are marine plants forming dense underwater meadows, which are among the most productive and valuable ecosystems on Earth. They have a long evolutionary history, descending from flowering land plants that returned into the ocean over 75 million years ago. The almost exclusively marine sediments of the Münsterland Cretaceous Basin occasionally yield plant fossils – mainly leaves from...

The upper part of the Rio da Batateira Formation crops out at the Cascata section (sensu Heimhofer and Hochhuli, 2010) and comprises a ca. 15 m thick fluvial to deltaic sedimentary rock succession of Aptian age. Eleven sedimentary rock samples have been investigated using the routine application of SEM and up to now more than 30 monocot and basal angiosperm pollen have been identified. Here,...

The Cambrian to Devonian interval witnessed the establishment and development of terrestrial ecosystems on our planet. Such major evolutionary events in life history consist of scenarios as: 1) ancestor of charophycean green algae during the Cambrian to Middle Ordovician; 2) early forms of first terrestrial, cryptospore-producing, bryophyte-like plants during from the Middle Ordovician to...

Nitrogen (N) is a crucial nutrient making up ~80% of Earth’s atmosphere. Despite this, most is in the biologically inert form N2—making nitrogen a limiting nutrient. No eukaryotes and only a few prokaryotes (<15%) possess the necessary molecular machinery to split atmospheric N2 and “fix” it to bioavailable forms. While not able to fix nitrogen themselves, certain clades of plants (including...

The Amazon drainage Basin is central to understanding the evolutionary history of Earth’s most extraordinary biodiversity, which holds 40% of the remaining global tropical rainforest. The Chiribiquete Mountains in the Colombian Amazon, characterised by unique tepui-like (tabletop) formations, are strategically located at the crossroad of four major biogeographical provinces: the Guiana Shield,...

The Miocene Epoch (23.03 – 5.33 Ma) represents one of the best natural analogues for future anthropogenic climate change. As a period characterised by significant climatic turnovers, higher global temperatures, and elevated CO$_2$ concentrations, it reflects climatic conditions comparable to projections of the late 21st century. While large-scale climate trends are well-documented via pollen...

The endemic Madeiran and Canarian genus Semele Kunth (Liliaceae; Asparagaceae sensu APG III) is a climber that presents broadly ovate to ovate-lanceolate phylloclades, flowers in cymes usually arising from the margins of the phylloclades, and an orange-red berry fruit. Two taxa are recognized: i) Semele androgyna (L.) Kunth, present in Madeira and the Canary Islands, and ii) *Semele...

The palaeobotanical collections at the Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Frankfurt (SF), Frankfurt am Main, Germany, are amongst the largest collections of this kind in Germany. They go back to the 19th century, and have continuously been enlarged since this time. They consist of material from regional (i.e. Hessian) localities but also from a large number of localities from all...

The Pelsa/Vazzoler fossil locality represents one of the best-preserved tropical lagoonal ecosystems of the Triassic in the Dolomites, yielding a rich malacofauna and ichthyofauna. In addition, rare laminated black limestone layers preserve a significant component of terrestrial input, including plant remains, rare insects, and traces of plant–animal interactions. A comprehensive collection...

The Permian-Triassic extinction event was the largest mass-extinction event in Earth’s history, but only very limited fossil floras have been preserved in the extremely arid environment of the Early and Middle Triassic. Here we present a unique fossil flora from the Upper Buntsandstein (Anisian, early Middle Triassic) of Üdingen, Germany.

Our locality bridges the (paleo-)geographical gap...

Solar ultraviolet-B (UV-B; 280–315 nm) radiation plays a fundamental role in terrestrial ecosystem processes, yet long-term terrestrial records of past UV-B variability remain limited, particularly in mid-latitude regions. This study develops and applies a chemo-palynological approach based on attenuated total reflection Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR micro-FTIR) microspectroscopy to...

In October 2023, new excavations in the Lebanese dysodiles (Jdeidet Bkassine, Jezzine District, Lebanon) revealed a unique Early Cretaceous ecosystem (125 Ma, Lower Barremian), providing a new perspective on the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution. The Lebanese dysodiles are exceptional Gondwanian deposits finely preserving fossil organisms in connection, the latter having deposited in organic...

Rich floras from the upper Carboniferous provide an excellent opportunity to investigate vegetation development under contrasting hydrological conditions in the vast wetland environments of the Saar-Nahe basin (Germany). Large quantities of specimen from six different sites (Camphausen, Velsen, Friedrichsthal, Göttelborn, Ensdorf and Reisbach) reveal shifting dominance of typical elements such...

Vibrational spectroscopy has emerged as a versatile and powerful analytical toolkit for probing the molecular composition of modern and fossil plants, and palynomorphs. Infrared and Raman spectroscopy are non-destructive techniques providing complementary chemical fingerprints useful for answering key questions in: evolutionary paleobiology (via chemotaxonomy), paleoclimatology (via...

The identification of fossil taxa is the main goal of paleontology. Knowing the composition of communities is fundamental to characterizing past ecosystems and understanding changes in environment and climate. However, taxonomic identification of animal remains is not always straightforward due to the high degree of fragmentation that bones tend to present.
Recently, a technique of molecular...