Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T21:37:35.202Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - Angiosperm diversification and Cretaceous environmental change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2009

Stephen J. Culver
Affiliation:
East Carolina University
Peter F. Rawson
Affiliation:
University College London
Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Flowering plants (angiosperms) comprise 250 000–300 000 living species and are more diverse than all other groups of extant plants combined. They dominate the vegetation over most of the Earth's land surface and therefore account for most of the primary productivity in terrestrial ecosystems. Despite their present-day importance, flowering plants were the last major group of land plants to appear in the fossil record. While all other major groups have an extensive fossil record that extends back to the Paleozoic or earliest Mesozoic, angiosperms have no well-established fossil record prior to the Cretaceous (Crane et al., 1995). The origin of flowering plants, and especially their rapid diversification during the Cretaceous and Tertiary, is therefore of great evolutionary interest and had profound consequences for the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems and the animals that inhabit them (Friis et al., 1987; Wing et al., 1992).

In this chapter we briefly introduce recent studies of angiosperm diversification, review the changing diversity of major plant groups through the Cretaceous, present new data on changing patterns of abundance, and briefly discuss the possible relationship between vegetational patterns and other aspects of Cretaceous global environmental change. While there is currently no clear evidence that the diversification of flowering plants was triggered by changes in the global environment, several patterns of vegetational change during the mid Cretaceous correlate broadly with major environmental perturbations including oceanic anoxia, increased tectonic activity and rapid sea floor spreading.

Type
Chapter
Information
Biotic Response to Global Change
The Last 145 Million Years
, pp. 207 - 222
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×