SB24033A new leaf species of Proteaceae and other Gondwanan elements from the early Paleogene Lota–Coronel flora of south–central Chile
The Swedish Museum of Natural History houses poorly studied Chilean plant fossils that were collected >100 years ago. Among these we found leaf fossils of the Gondwanan Proteaceae family, whose closest relatives are currently found only in Australasian rainforests. These and other fossils from the same ~55-million-year-old assemblage add to evidence that a similar flora was formerly distributed across a vegetated Antarctica, and contradict a long-held view that Chilean forests of that time exclusively comprised Neotropical genera. (Photograph by R. J. Carpenter.)
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