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A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet
Tibet’s ancient topography and its role in climatic and biotic evolution remain speculative due to a paucity of quantitative surface-height measurements through time and space, and sparse fossil records. However, newly discovered fossils from a present elevation of ∼4,850 m in central Tibet improve...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
National Academy of Sciences
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7777077/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33288692 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2012647117 |
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author | Su, Tao Spicer, Robert A. Wu, Fei-Xiang Farnsworth, Alexander Huang, Jian Del Rio, Cédric Deng, Tao Ding, Lin Deng, Wei-Yu-Dong Huang, Yong-Jiang Hughes, Alice Jia, Lin-Bo Jin, Jian-Hua Li, Shu-Feng Liang, Shui-Qing Liu, Jia Liu, Xiao-Yan Sherlock, Sarah Spicer, Teresa Srivastava, Gaurav Tang, He Valdes, Paul Wang, Teng-Xiang Widdowson, Mike Wu, Meng-Xiao Xing, Yao-Wu Xu, Cong-Li Yang, Jian Zhang, Cong Zhang, Shi-Tao Zhang, Xin-Wen Zhao, Fan Zhou, Zhe-Kun |
author_facet | Su, Tao Spicer, Robert A. Wu, Fei-Xiang Farnsworth, Alexander Huang, Jian Del Rio, Cédric Deng, Tao Ding, Lin Deng, Wei-Yu-Dong Huang, Yong-Jiang Hughes, Alice Jia, Lin-Bo Jin, Jian-Hua Li, Shu-Feng Liang, Shui-Qing Liu, Jia Liu, Xiao-Yan Sherlock, Sarah Spicer, Teresa Srivastava, Gaurav Tang, He Valdes, Paul Wang, Teng-Xiang Widdowson, Mike Wu, Meng-Xiao Xing, Yao-Wu Xu, Cong-Li Yang, Jian Zhang, Cong Zhang, Shi-Tao Zhang, Xin-Wen Zhao, Fan Zhou, Zhe-Kun |
author_sort | Su, Tao |
collection | PubMed |
description | Tibet’s ancient topography and its role in climatic and biotic evolution remain speculative due to a paucity of quantitative surface-height measurements through time and space, and sparse fossil records. However, newly discovered fossils from a present elevation of ∼4,850 m in central Tibet improve substantially our knowledge of the ancient Tibetan environment. The 70 plant fossil taxa so far recovered include the first occurrences of several modern Asian lineages and represent a Middle Eocene (∼47 Mya) humid subtropical ecosystem. The fossils not only record the diverse composition of the ancient Tibetan biota, but also allow us to constrain the Middle Eocene land surface height in central Tibet to ∼1,500 ± 900 m, and quantify the prevailing thermal and hydrological regime. This “Shangri-La”–like ecosystem experienced monsoon seasonality with a mean annual temperature of ∼19 °C, and frosts were rare. It contained few Gondwanan taxa, yet was compositionally similar to contemporaneous floras in both North America and Europe. Our discovery quantifies a key part of Tibetan Paleogene topography and climate, and highlights the importance of Tibet in regard to the origin of modern Asian plant species and the evolution of global biodiversity. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7777077 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | National Academy of Sciences |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77770772021-01-12 A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet Su, Tao Spicer, Robert A. Wu, Fei-Xiang Farnsworth, Alexander Huang, Jian Del Rio, Cédric Deng, Tao Ding, Lin Deng, Wei-Yu-Dong Huang, Yong-Jiang Hughes, Alice Jia, Lin-Bo Jin, Jian-Hua Li, Shu-Feng Liang, Shui-Qing Liu, Jia Liu, Xiao-Yan Sherlock, Sarah Spicer, Teresa Srivastava, Gaurav Tang, He Valdes, Paul Wang, Teng-Xiang Widdowson, Mike Wu, Meng-Xiao Xing, Yao-Wu Xu, Cong-Li Yang, Jian Zhang, Cong Zhang, Shi-Tao Zhang, Xin-Wen Zhao, Fan Zhou, Zhe-Kun Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Physical Sciences Tibet’s ancient topography and its role in climatic and biotic evolution remain speculative due to a paucity of quantitative surface-height measurements through time and space, and sparse fossil records. However, newly discovered fossils from a present elevation of ∼4,850 m in central Tibet improve substantially our knowledge of the ancient Tibetan environment. The 70 plant fossil taxa so far recovered include the first occurrences of several modern Asian lineages and represent a Middle Eocene (∼47 Mya) humid subtropical ecosystem. The fossils not only record the diverse composition of the ancient Tibetan biota, but also allow us to constrain the Middle Eocene land surface height in central Tibet to ∼1,500 ± 900 m, and quantify the prevailing thermal and hydrological regime. This “Shangri-La”–like ecosystem experienced monsoon seasonality with a mean annual temperature of ∼19 °C, and frosts were rare. It contained few Gondwanan taxa, yet was compositionally similar to contemporaneous floras in both North America and Europe. Our discovery quantifies a key part of Tibetan Paleogene topography and climate, and highlights the importance of Tibet in regard to the origin of modern Asian plant species and the evolution of global biodiversity. National Academy of Sciences 2020-12-29 2020-12-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7777077/ /pubmed/33288692 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2012647117 Text en Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Physical Sciences Su, Tao Spicer, Robert A. Wu, Fei-Xiang Farnsworth, Alexander Huang, Jian Del Rio, Cédric Deng, Tao Ding, Lin Deng, Wei-Yu-Dong Huang, Yong-Jiang Hughes, Alice Jia, Lin-Bo Jin, Jian-Hua Li, Shu-Feng Liang, Shui-Qing Liu, Jia Liu, Xiao-Yan Sherlock, Sarah Spicer, Teresa Srivastava, Gaurav Tang, He Valdes, Paul Wang, Teng-Xiang Widdowson, Mike Wu, Meng-Xiao Xing, Yao-Wu Xu, Cong-Li Yang, Jian Zhang, Cong Zhang, Shi-Tao Zhang, Xin-Wen Zhao, Fan Zhou, Zhe-Kun A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet |
title | A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet |
title_full | A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet |
title_fullStr | A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet |
title_full_unstemmed | A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet |
title_short | A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet |
title_sort | middle eocene lowland humid subtropical “shangri-la” ecosystem in central tibet |
topic | Physical Sciences |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7777077/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33288692 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2012647117 |
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