Category: Angiosperms
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A day in the Cretaceous of Patagonia
For today’s post, I want to show you an astounding piece of art I commissioned to Ida Kalsta, an extraordinary illustrator and artist. This represents an environment from the Early Cretaceous (Aptian, ~116 millions of years ago) of Patagonia, in particular the possible environment of the Ticoa harrisii fossiliferous layer in the Anfiteatro de Ticó […]
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Forgotten formations: Anfiteatro de Ticó.
While doing some doomscrolling on Twitter, I came across this absolutely spectacular reconstruction of the Triassic Fremouw Formation by Liam Elward. The main focus of the piece are a couple of Lystrosaurus, but the attention to the flora of this formation is stunning. Many plants are known from the Fremouw formation, with many having been […]
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Palaeobotany for Paleoartists VI: paleoart history and the Potomac Group
For this new post, I want to share a piece of paleoartistic history with you. This comes thanks to from James Doyle, a palaeobotanist with a long history of research in the Early Cretaceous and the origin of the angiosperms, who is now an emeritus at the University of California, Davis. In the 1970s, Jim […]
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Palaeobotany for Paleoartists V: Early Angiosperms
Angiosperms in paleoart, especially in the Early Cretaceous, are often limited to familiar forms such as Nymphaeaceae (waterlilies) or magnolias. Although there is evidence of both groups in the Early Cretaceous fossil record, other groups of angiosperms were probably much more abundant across a range of environments during that period. The main example are Chloranthaceae, […]
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A odd “cycad” is an unexpected angiosperm from the Early Cretaceous of Patagonia
Recently a new chapter of my reinvestigation of material from the Early Cretaceous of Argentina has been published in the journal New Phytologist. This is the second work stemming from my visit to the Natural History Museum in London (funded by the marvelous SYNTHESYS scheme), where I had the opportunity give a new look at […]
Mario Coiro 