Plant Fossils: Taxonomy, Biogeography and Palaeoenvironments
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecology and Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2023) | Viewed by 198
Special Issue Editor
Interests: palynology; vegetation history; paleoclimate; human impact on forests; coastal environments; quaternary
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In recent years, great progress has been made in research on macroscopic and microscopic plant fossils, leading to a renewed interest in both the history of plants and the connection of palaeobotany with other disciplines. New computational methods and advanced analytical techniques in plant fossil studies, together with a substantial increase in the availability of published data, have allowed us to explore new scientific frontiers and to refine tried and trusted applications. Palaeobotanical data are increasingly employed to calibrate and validate phylogenetic schemes, to elaborate biogeographical patterns through time, and to define palaeoecological dynamics. Current trends in evolutionary biology and taxonomy emphasize how analyses that incorporate fossil data to elucidate relationships within living clades are far more accurate than those based exclusively on extant taxa. Substantial methodological advancements in historical biogeography show how the development of complex and more realistic models, using information from both extinct and extant lineages, can improve our understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of taxa and their underlying mechanisms. Information from global databases on macroscopic and microscopic plant fossils, compared with paleoclimate reconstructions based on independent proxies, allow increasing accuracy in detecting palaeoecological processes at different geographical scales.
This Special Issue welcomes high-quality papers showing how plant fossils can contribute to taxonomical and biogeographical questions of forest taxa, as well as to palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic investigations involving woodland ecosystems.
Dr. Federico Di Rita
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- plant fossils
- taxonomy
- evolutionary biology
- palaeobotany
- palaeoecological dynamics
- palaeoecological processes
