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Science 11 November 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5750, pp. 993 - 996
DOI: 10.1126/science.1116913
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Research Articles

Transient Floral Change and Rapid Global Warming at the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary

Scott L. Wing,1* Guy J. Harrington,2 Francesca A. Smith,1,3 Jonathan I. Bloch,4 Douglas M. Boyer,5 Katherine H. Freeman3

Rapid global warming of 5° to 10°C during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) coincided with major turnover in vertebrate faunas, but previous studies have found little floral change. Plant fossils discovered in Wyoming, United States, show that PETM floras were a mixture of native and migrant lineages and that plant range shifts were large and rapid (occurring within 10,000 years). Floral composition and leaf shape and size suggest that climate warmed by ~5°C during the PETM and that precipitation was low early in the event and increased later. Floral response to warming and/or increased atmospheric CO2 during the PETM was comparable in rate and magnitude to that seen in postglacial floras and to the predicted effects of anthropogenic carbon release and climate change on future vegetation.

1 Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, 10th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20560, USA.
2 Department of Geography, Earth, and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.
3 Department of Geosciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
4 Division of Vertebrate Paleontology, Florida Museum of Natural History, 222 Dickinson Hall, Museum Road and Newell Drive, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
5 Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794–8081, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: wings{at}si.edu

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