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Science 4 April 2003:
Vol. 300. no. 5616, pp. 122 - 125
DOI: 10.1126/science.1080475
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Reports

High Plant Diversity in Eocene South America: Evidence from Patagonia

Peter Wilf,123* N. Rubén Cúneo,4 Kirk R. Johnson,5 Jason F. Hicks,5 Scott L. Wing,6 John D. Obradovich7

Tropical South America has the highest plant diversity of any region today, but this richness is usually characterized as a geologically recent development (Neogene or Pleistocene). From caldera-lake beds exposed at Laguna del Hunco in Patagonia, Argentina, paleolatitude ~47°S, we report 102 leaf species. Radioisotopic and paleomagnetic analyses indicate that the flora was deposited 52 million years ago, the time of the early Eocene climatic optimum, when tropical plant taxa and warm, equable climates reached middle latitudes of both hemispheres. Adjusted for sample size, observed richness exceeds that of any other Eocene leaf flora, supporting an ancient history of high plant diversity in warm areas of South America.

1 Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
2 Museum of Paleontology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
3 Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
4 Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio, Trelew, Chubut 9100, Argentina.
5 Department of Earth Sciences, Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver, CO 80205, USA.
6 Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA.
7 U.S. Geological Survey, Lakewood, CO 80225, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: pwilf{at}geosc.psu.edu

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