Cenozoic plants from Tibet:An extraordinary decade of discovery,understanding and implications  

作　　者：Zhekun ZHOU Jia LIU Linlin CHEN Robert A.SPICER Shufeng LI Jian HUANG Shitao ZHANG Yongjiang HUANG Linbo JIA Jinjin HU Tao SU 

机构地区：[1]CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology,Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Mengla,666303,China [2]CAS Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia,Kunming Institute of Botany,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Kunming,650204,China [3]School of Environment,Earth and Ecosystem Sciences,The Open University,Milton Keynes,MK76AA,UK [4]Faculty of Land Resource Engineering,Kunming University of Science and Technology,Kunming,650093,China [5]State Key Laboratory of Paleobiology and Stratigraphy,Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Nanjing,210008,China

出　　处：《Science China Earth Sciences》2023年第2期205-226,共22页中国科学（地球科学英文版）

基　　金：supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research(Grant No.2019QZKK0705);the Strategic Priority Research Program of CAS(Grant No.XDA20070301);the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.42002020,42072024,41988101 and 41922010);the National Natural Science Foundation of China-Natural Environment Research Council of the United Kingdom joint research program(Grant Nos.41661134049 and NE/P013805/1);the Foundation of the State Key Laboratory of Paleobiology and Stratigraphy,Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology,Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant Nos.203127 and 193117);the West Light Project(Grant No.2020000023)。

摘　　要：Plant fossils play an important role in understanding landscape evolution across the Tibetan Region,as well as plant diversity across wider eastern Asia.Within the last decade or so,paleobotanical investigations within the Tibet Region have led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of how the present plateau formed and how this affected the regional climate and biota.This is because:(1)Numerous new taxa have been reported.Of all the Cenozoic records of new plant fossil species reported from the Tibet(Xizang)Autonomous Region 45 out of 63(70%)were documented after 2010.Among these,many represent the earliest records from Asia,or in some cases worldwide,at the genus or family level.(2)These fossils show that during the Paleogene,the region now occupied by the Tibetan Plateau was a globally significant floristic exchange hub.Based on paleobiogeographic studies,grounded by fossil evidence,there are four models of regional floristic migration and exchange,i.e.,into Tibet,out of Tibet,out of India and into/out of Africa.(3)Plant fossils evidence the asynchronous formation histories for different parts of the Tibetan Plateau.During most of the Paleogene,there was a wide east-west trending valley with a subtropical climate in central Tibet bounded by high(>4 km)mountain systems,but that by the early Oligocene the modern high plateau had begun to form by the rise of the valley floor.Paleoelevation reconstructions using radiometrically-dated plant fossil assemblages in southeastern Tibet show that by the earliest Oligocene southeastern Tibet(including the Hengduan Mountains)had reached its present elevation.(4)The coevolution between vegetation,landform and paleoenvironment is evidenced by fossil records from what is now the central Tibetan Plateau.From the Paleocene to Pliocene,plant diversity transformed from that of tropical,to subtropical forests,through warm to cool temperate woodland and eventually to deciduous shrubland in response to landscape evolution from a seasonally humid lowland valley,to a high and dry pl

关 键 词：Tibetan Plateau CENOZOIC PALEOBOTANY FLORA Central valley BIODIVERSITY 

分 类 号：Q914[天文地球—古生物学与地层学] P534.6[生物学—古生物学]