The leafy liverwort Frullania (Jungermanniopsida) in the Cretaceous amber forest of Myanmar

A Burmese amber fossil of <i>Radula</i> (Porellales, Jungermanniopsida) provides insights into the Cretaceous evolution of epiphytic lineages of leafy liverworts

“…It does, however, not necessarily require changes of the general plant body plan, especially if adaptations to epiphyte growth such as complicated bilobed leaves, solely lateral branching, and fascicled rhizoids (Heinrichs et al, 2005) were already present in the liverwort lineages growing on gymnosperm bark. It is thus not surprising that other Burmese amber fossils of liverworts also have the morphological characteristics of extant genera (Heinrichs et al, 2012.…”

100-million-year-old conifer tissues from the mid-Cretaceous amber of Charente (western France) revealed by synchrotron microtomography

“…Fossils of various angiosperms, bryophytes, ferns and gymnosperms have been reported from many amber deposits worldwide, but detailed descriptions have focused mostly on inclusions from Miocene Dominican and Mexican ambers (Miranda, 1963;Calvillo-Canadell et al, 2010;Chambers et al, 2011;Heinrichs et al, 2014Heinrichs et al, , 2015aLee et al, 2015;Schneider et al, 2015;Poinar and Struwe, 2016), Palaeogene European ambers (Frahm, 1996;Grolle and Meister, 2004;Koller et al, 2005;Dörfelt and Schmidt, 2007;Schmidt and Dörfelt, 2007;Ignatov and Perkovsky, 2011;Heinrichs et al, 2015a, b;Mamontov et al, 2015;Sadowski et al, 2015Sadowski et al, , 2016, and Cretaceous Burmese and New Jersey ambers (Crepet and Nikon, 1998;Poinar and Buckley, 2008;Hentschel et al, 2009;Chambers et al, 2010;Heinrichs et al, 2012;Schneider et al, 2016). Pollen grains, sporangia, sporophytes, leaves and flowers can be very finely preserved in amber, allowing detailed morphological studies; however, analyses with standard optical microscopes are limited to the gross morphology of the amber inclusions, and only the use of invasive techniques such as amber thin-sectioning has permitted access to cellular and histological details of the plants (Koller et al, 2005).…”

Hepatics from Rovno amber (Ukraine)

“…Grolle & Meister (2004) in their revision recognized 9 species of Frullania in Baltic and Bitterfeldian amber; in addition, several species were described from Dominican amber (Heinrichs & Schmidt, 2010). The recently found Frullania in Early Cretaceous amber in Myanmar is the oldest known one (Hentschel et al, 2009;Heinrichs et al, 2012a).…”