Collaborative Research: Unearthing Antarctica's role in the Late Cretaceous Evolution of Flowering Plants

Recent discoveries of fossil flowers and fruits from this time period have significantly furthered our understanding of early flowering plant evolution. However, the majority of these discoveries are from the Northern Hemisphere while similar discoveries from the Southern Hemisphere are relatively lacking.

This project will address this paucity of data by collecting and describing Late Cretaceous flowering plant fossils from Western Antarctica and placing them in evolutionary frameworks to better understand early flowering plant evolution, biogeographic history, and Antarctica’s role in the formation of modern ecosystems. Western Antarctica is one of the few places in the Southern Hemisphere that is reported to contain Late Cretaceous-aged (100–66million years ago) three-dimensionally preserved flowers and fruits.