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Late Paleocene fossils from the Cerrejón Formation, Colombia, are the earliest record of Neotropical rainforest

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dc.contributor.author Wing, Scott L.
dc.contributor.author Herrera, Fabiany
dc.contributor.author Jaramillo, Carlos A.
dc.contributor.author Gómez-Navarro, Carolina
dc.contributor.author Wilf, Peter
dc.contributor.author Labandeira, Conrad C.
dc.date.accessioned 2009-11-12T18:10:21Z
dc.date.available 2009-11-12T18:10:21Z
dc.date.issued 2009
dc.identifier 0027-8424
dc.identifier.citation Wing, Scott L., Herrera, Fabiany, Jaramillo, Carlos A., Gómez-Navarro, Carolina, Wilf, Peter, and Labandeira, Conrad C. 2009. "<a href="https://repository.si.edu/handle/10088/8393">Late Paleocene fossils from the Cerrejón Formation, Colombia, are the earliest record of Neotropical rainforest</a>." <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America</em>, 106, (44) 18627–18632. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0905130106">https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0905130106</a>.
dc.identifier.issn 0027-8424
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10088/8393
dc.description.abstract Neotropical rainforests have a very poor fossil record, making hypotheses concerning their origins difficult to evaluate. Nevertheless, some of their most important characteristics can be preserved in the fossil record: high plant diversity, dominance by a distinctive combination of angiosperm families, a preponderance of plant species with large, smooth-margined leaves, and evidence for a high diversity of herbivorous insects. Here, we report on an ≈58-my-old flora from the Cerrejón Formation of Colombia (paleolatitude ≈5 °N) that is the earliest megafossil record of Neotropical rainforest. The flora has abundant, diverse palms and legumes and similar family composition to extant Neotropical rainforest. Three-quarters of the leaf types are large and entire-margined, indicating rainfall &gt;2,500 mm/year and mean annual temperature &gt;25 °C. Despite modern family composition and tropical paleoclimate, the diversity of fossil pollen and leaf samples is 60–80% that of comparable samples from extant and Quaternary Neotropical rainforest from similar climates. Insect feeding damage on Cerrejón fossil leaves, representing primary consumers, is abundant, but also of low diversity, and overwhelmingly made by generalist feeders rather than specialized herbivores. Cerrejón megafossils provide strong evidence that the same Neotropical rainforest families have characterized the biome since the Paleocene, maintaining their importance through climatic phases warmer and cooler than present. The low diversity of both plants and herbivorous insects in this Paleocene Neotropical rainforest may reflect an early stage in the diversification of the lineages that inhabit this biome, and/or a long recovery period from the terminal Cretaceous extinction.
dc.format.extent 1534104 bytes
dc.format.extent 18627–18632
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.language.iso en_US
dc.publisher National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
dc.relation.ispartof Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106 (44)
dc.title Late Paleocene fossils from the Cerrejón Formation, Colombia, are the earliest record of Neotropical rainforest
dc.type article
sro.identifier.refworksID 98607
sro.identifier.itemID 80574
sro.description.unit NMNH
sro.description.unit NH-Paleobiology
sro.identifier.doi 10.1073/pnas.0905130106
sro.identifier.url https://repository.si.edu/handle/10088/8393


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