ANN ARBOR — A new paper from scientists in North America, Europe and China reveals important details about key transitions in the evolution of plant life on our planet.
From strange and exotic algae, mosses, ferns, trees and flowers growing deep in steamy rain forests to the grains and vegetables we eat and the ornamental plants adorning our homes, all plant life on Earth shares more than a billion years of history. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. — A new university-led study with NASA participation finds ancient Antarctica was much warmer and wetter than previously suspected. The climate was suitable to support substantial vegetation — including stunted trees — along the edges of the frozen continent.
The team of scientists involved in the study, published online June 17 in Nature Geoscience, was led by Sarah J. Feakins of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and included researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
By examining plant leaf wax remnants in sediment core samples taken from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, the research team found summer temperatures along the Antarctic coast 15 to 20 million years ago were 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) warmer than today, with temperatures reaching as high as 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius). Precipitation levels also were found to be several times higher than today. (more…)
*Research genetically traces flowers to a single common ancestor*
From southern Africa’s pineapple lily to Western Australia’s swamp bottlebrush, flowering plants are everywhere. Also called angiosperms, they make up 90 percent of all land-based, plant life.
New research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides new insights into their genetic origin, an evolutionary innovation that quickly gave rise to many diverse flowering plants more than 130 million years ago. Moreover, a flower with genetic programming similar to a water lily may have started it all. (more…)
*Researchers at University of California, Berkeley, work with Microsoft Research to analyze vast amounts of data without supercomputers.*
BERKELEY, Calif. — Studying the environment would be simple if it weren’t for one thing: Even an isolated ecosystem is unbelievably complicated. Factors to study include water systems, plant life cycles, carbon dioxide fluctuations, resource use by humans, and far more — and each can be studied at the scale of a plant or of the planet, and measured in an instant or over decades. (more…)
