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Araucarioid wood from the late Oligocene–early Miocene of Hainan Island: first fossil evidence for the genus Agathis in the Northern Hemisphere

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Abstract

Although many fossil and molecular data suggest migrations from Malesia and Asia to Australia appear to dominate floristic exchange between Australian and Asian rainforests, evidence is emerging that demonstrate dispersal of plant groups from Australia to Asia. In this paper, a new species Agathis ledongensis sp. nov. is described on the basis of silicified wood from the late Oligocene–early Miocene of the Qiutangling Formation in Ledong, Hainan Island, South China. It is the first fossil record of Agathis in the Northern Hemisphere, and the only known fossil evidence of its dispersal outside of Gondwana. The close affinity of the fossil wood from Ledong with the genus Agathis was confirmed by comparing quantitative traits in 31 wood samples of 20 species representing all three extant genera of the Araucariaceae. The percentage of tracheids with uniseriate pitting on radial walls is shown as an additional diagnostic trait for separating Agathis and Wollemia from Araucaria. The wood of Agathis ledongensis provides evidence for the dispersal of this important plant group from Australia, or another Gondwanan terrane, to eastern Asia based on reliable fossil data. It records the occurrence of this genus in Hainan Island by the early Miocene, i.e. at the beginning of the formation of the island chains between Australia and the South-East Asia and thus the provision of a land migration route. As the land routes between these continents were restricted at that time, the migration of Agathis to Malesia and Asia was presumably facilitated by long-distance dispersal of its winged seeds by wind.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41572011, 41820104002), the joint Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grant Nos. 41811530082, 18-55-53015), the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Incentive Grant No. 109531), the State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy (Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, CAS) (No. 173101), the Scientific Research Fund, Hongda Zhang, Sun Yat-sen University, and the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Resources (No. PlantKF04). We thank the University of Johannesburg and the Komarov Botanical Institute (institutional research Project No. AAAA-A18-118030690081-1) for financial support for A.A.O. We thank graduate students majoring in plant science at Sun Yat-sen University for participating in the field collection of the fossil. We are grateful to Prof. Robert A. Spicer (The Open University, UK) for improvements to our English, and to Dr. Zane Webber (AgResearch, Margot Forde Forage Germplasm Centre, New Zealand), and Dr. Mikhail Fokin (Biotellga Ltd., New Zealand) for their kind help in getting access to some important publications.

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  1. Alexei A. Oskolski, Luliang Huang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, and School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Alexei A. Oskolski, Luliang Huang & Jianhua Jin

  2. Department of Botany and Plant Biotechnology, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park, Johannesburg, 2006, South Africa

    Alexei A. Oskolski & Anna V. Stepanova

  3. Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Prof. Popov str. 2, St. Petersburg, 197376, Russia

    Alexei A. Oskolski & Anna V. Stepanova

  4. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Alexei A. Oskolski & Luliang Huang

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Oskolski, A.A., Huang, L., Stepanova, A.V. et al. Araucarioid wood from the late Oligocene–early Miocene of Hainan Island: first fossil evidence for the genus Agathis in the Northern Hemisphere. J Plant Res 133, 157–173 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-019-01165-z

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