Anne-Laure D 🌿

@aldpaleo

Paleobotanist at @CNRSecologie.bsky.social & @umramap.bsky.social | (re)posts about fossil & living plants 🌲🌿🍂⛏️ Old posts are deleted.

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Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 2d

🌿 And photo 4 shows a pond with water lillies and the aquatic fern Salvinia cucullata (" Asian watermoss" )📍in Xinshuangbana botanical garden, 2026. ⛏️ Salvinia is first recorded in the Cretaceous.📄 Open access #paleobotany paper from which the photo comes: bomax.botany.pl/cgi-bin/pubs...

Salvinia cucullata covering the surface of a pond

Fossil Salvinia leaf from the Miocene of Poland, from Collinson et al 2001 (Acta Palaeobotanica 41: 253-282)

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 2d

🌿 Photo 3 is a fertile frond of Osmunda regalis ("royal fern" )📍in Stockholm botanical garden, 2022. ⛏️ Osmundaceae are first recorded in the Permian (>250 Ma) & Osmunda in the Cretaceous or Paleogene 📄 Open access #paleobotany paper on their fossil record & phylogeny: doi.org/10.7717/peer...

Fertile frond of the extant royal fern Osmunda regalis

Foliage of an Osmundaceae from the Triassic of Antarctica (from Escapa et al. 2011. Palaios 26: 522-544)

Foliage of Osmunda from the Eocene of China (from Tian et al. 2016. Paleoworld 25: 149-169)

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 2d

🌿 Photo 1 shows leaves of Marsilea quadrifolia ("water clover"), an aquatic #fern with clover-like leaves📍in Padova botanical garden, 2014. ⛏️ Marsilea is first recorded in the Cretaceous 📄 Open access #paleobotany paper from which the photo comes: doi.org/10.2478/acpa...

Foliage of Marsilea quadrifolia at the botanical gardens in Padova in 2014. The leaves look like clover leaves with 4 leaflets.

Fossil Marsilea foliage from the Eocene of the USA. Photo from Hermsen 2019 (Acta Palaeobotanica 59: 27-50, fig 4), see link in post

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 3d

A little game ahead of #FernFriday 🌿 🤔 Only 1 of these 4 photos doesn't show any #fern. Can you find which one? I'll post the answer and more details tomorrow! #botany

Several stout plants with crowns of large pinnate leaves, one of the plants with coiled leaflets on all its leaves

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 4d

And an accidental very cool photo that I took without looking: people watching the #eclipse with a surprise superimposed reflection of the crescent-shaped eclipsed sun 🤩

Shadows of people watching the sun (that looks like a shiny ball) + an unintended superimposed reflection of the crescent shaped eclipsed sun.

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 4d

No good image at the maximum of the #eclipse (97% here) but I'm still happy with my handheld phone photos 🤓🌞🌝

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 6d

Sometimes fieldwork IS in an absolutely epic location where very few persons have ever been but you can't find any good #fossil plants! 📌 Prince Albert Mountains, Antarctica, 2014 🌿⛏️🏔️ #paleobotany

A landscape in the Prince Charles Mts in Antarctica. Expised rock above the ice sheet is visible in the foreground with 2 persons walking. A higher mountain peak is in the background, beyond an ice field.

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 9d

Sometimes the fossil site is in an epic location where few persons have ever been. Sometimes it's a ditch by a stinky sewer -and it's ok 🌿⛏️💩 Happy #FossilFriday! #paleobotany

Photo of an amazing outcrop on a beautiful day (2013)

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 24d

Et plusieurs conférences dont une conférence-démo sur les plantes fossiles animée par ma collègue Gaëlle et moi le 17 octobre "Du fossile au paysage : reconstruire les forêts passées pour comprendre l’évolution des écosystèmes" 🌿🌲⛏️ Lien: echappeesinattendues.cnrs.fr/event/du-fos...

Aperçu de la page d'information. Deux personnes comparent un fossile à sa reconstruction en 3d sur un écran

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· 24d

Plusieurs événements sont prévus dont une exposition préparée avec des scientifiques de @isemevol.bsky.social, de @umramap.bsky.social et du CEFE Lien: echappeesinattendues.cnrs.fr/event/exposi...

Affiche de l'exposition avec une reconstruction de paysage du Mésozoïque. Texte: exposition : la science à la recherche des mondes perdus. Du mardi 29 septembre au samedi 31 octobre. 10h 19h. Domaine départemental de Pierrevives.

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 17

For absolutely no specific reason, here's a photo of the Jurassic fossil #forest at Curio Bay, New Zealand, for this week's #FossilFriday 🌲⛏️🦕 (More about Curio Bay: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curio_Bay) #paleobotany

Two parallel fossil logs (conifers) on a rock platform by the sea at low tide (photo from 2012)

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 13

Friends of Fossil Forests seminar tomorrow "Opalized wood from Clover Creek, Idaho: A case study in the power of amateur-professional collaboration" 🌳🌲⛏️ July 14, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT (GMT-4). All info & RSVP to get the link: www.fossilforests.org/post/petrifi... #fossil #paleobotany #wood

Photo of a section of fossil wood from Clover Creek from the Friends of Fossil Forests website.

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 10

I'm happy to have been one of the consultants for #SurvivingEarth E5 "When the forests collapsed" 🌿⛏️ "Showing" plants only known from ~300 million year old fragmentary fossils while trying to stay as scientifically accurate as possible IS frustrating, but I think the result looks good #paleobotany

Carboniferous forest set with a mix of living plants that look like some Carboniferous species (eg, the tree ferns) & physical models of the bottom of the lycopsid tree trunks (image from Loud Minds)

Virtual lycopsid forest as seen in tbe episode (Image from Milk)

Screenshot of a view of the late Carboniferous swamp forest.

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 6

Double big leaves : 🌿 the local #fern species Angiopteris caudatiformis & 🌿 in the back a small species of Amorphophallus with its tree like single leaf.

Photo of a large fern frond and an Amorphophallus plant in the background

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 6

Another lianescent Fabaceae, this one slightly agressive 🌿 (Mezoneuron cucullatum) #botany

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 5

Snake Climber (Phanera scandens, Fabaceae) a species of lianas with curly stems 🐍 🌿

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 5

Lycopsids are less conspicuous but also well represented, here a spikemoss (Selaginella) with beautiful colours growing in the shadows on the side of the road 🌿

Part of a Selaginella plant with coloured tips

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 4

Last post for today - I have to go eat some delicious food for hours 🍜 ! The cycad collection, with a really tall one 💚

I several cycads in a garden, one of them much taller .

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 4

Flowering #plants doing their thing 🌸🌺

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 4

🌿✨ Acrostichum aureum, the golden leather #fern. These ferns are taller than a person & found in swamps, river banks and other wet locations in the tropics, including in mangroves as they can tolerate growing in salted water 🌊 #botany

Golden leather fern by a pond with lotus flowers

Detail of the fertile part of the fronds

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jul 4

After a great week at the 62 Annual Meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation in Xishuangbanna 🇨🇳, I'm spending the weekend at the world famous Botanical Garden (XTBG) 🤩 Watch this thread today & tomorrow for some cool tropical #plant photos! 🌿🌲🌸 1/n #botany

Ficus tree in the fig collection section of the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jun 22

📣 It's out ! ✨32✨ great #paleobotany papers in this special issue of @annbot.bsky.social on fossil #plants 🌿⛏️ edited by Mihai Tomescu, @sandyheth.bsky.social, Brian Atkinson & myself. Thank you to all the authors & all the reviewers for their contributions! 📄 academic.oup.com/aob/issue

Cover of the special issue - with a section in a fern rhizome

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jun 5

We also describe for the 1st time the secondary phloem of Hermanophyton and we (re) discuss its habit (large liana vs. monocaulous tree) & possible affinities. We... do not actually answer any of the questions - but you were warned in the paper's title! Happy #FossilFriday 😬🌿⛏️ 3/3

A cross section of the new species of Hermanophyton

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· Jun 5

Once in a while I venture out of the Paleozoic to look at younger weird plants... Hermanophyton is a genus based on silicified stems from the Jurassic of the US. It is very likely a gymnosperm but beyond that its affinities are, well, "obscure". #paleobotany #FossilFriday 🌿⛏️ 🧵 1/3

A reconstruction of the structure of the stem of Hermanophyton proposed by Tidwell and Ash in 1990

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· May 30

Red helleborines (Cephalanthera rubra) #orchid #botany 🌸 💚

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· May 29

The paper is not online yet but it's too pretty not to show for this #FossilFriday: a new species of Keraphyton from the Late Devonian of Australia, part of the work of @toinechampreux.bsky.social. Keraphyton is an iridopteridale, an extinct group related to ferns & horsetails. #paleobotany 🌿⛏️

A transverse section in a stem of the new species of Keraphyton showing the preserved tissues

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· May 16

Crab spiders! In this case Synema globosum sometimes called Napoleon spider 🕷️(because of the red, yellow, or white abdomen with a black pattern supposedly ressembling a bust of Napoléon). They are ambush hunters and don't build a web but these obviously built themselves a nice hiding space...

Side view of a daisy flower with folded petals showing a tiny spider hiding under the petals

A daisy flower with folded petals and a small spider with a bright red and black abdomen that has caught a fly

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· May 16

Danger flowers 🌼 The folded petals on these daisies mean...

A daisy flower with one folded petal. A regular looking daisy is in the background

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· May 15

Part of the rooting system of the lycopsid trees, from the latest Carboniferous of France 🌿⛏️. The rooting structures ("Stigmaria", rhizomorphs not truly roots*) bear rootlets, visible here on the sides & as scars on the Stigmaria axis. *more: doi.org/10.1086/720641 #paleobotany #FossilFriday

Impression /cast of a Stigmaria rooting structure with attached rootlets. Scale bar is about 2.5 cm

Anne-Laure D 🌿@aldpaleo· May 13

Nice "behind the scenes" from #SurvivingEarth showing the physical set + CGI for reconstructing the Carboniferous forest (from Picture impossible's Instagram) #paleobotany