The Late Cretaceous Flora of South Bohemia

The Cretaceous period (145 66 million years ago) was not only the time when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, it was also a time of extensive global changes in geography, geology, and climate. These changes, in turn, had a profound influence on plant evolution and diversity. A plant group, for which the Cretaceous was particularly important is the angiosperms (flowering plants). It was in the Cretaceous when they started to diversify and to become more widespread. In the beginning of the Cretaceous, terrestrial ecosystems were still mainly composed of mosses, ferns and conifers. However, by the end of the Cretaceous, the angiosperms had taken over as the most diverse group of plants that dominated most terrestrial ecosystems on earth. This project is focused on the study of the diversity of plant fossils from a Late Cretaceous flora from South Bohemia, which represents one of the best-preserved Cretaceous floras in Europe. Currently, a new highway from Budweis (Czech Republic) to the Austrian border is in construction and the excavation work has exposed Late Cretaceous sediments at multiple localities, opening up a unique opportunity to collect fossil material. While these sediments and the fossils they contain were partly known already from earlier research efforts, there are still many open questions that this project attempts to answer. One important question, for example, is how old exactly the sediments and the fossils are. This question will be answered with the help of detailed comparisons with other, already better known Central European Palaeofloras from the Cretaceous period. Another focus of the project will be to develop a comprehensive understanding of the morphological diversity and species composition of the flora. This task will be tackled by studying the different types of plant fossils that are present in the sediments including leaves, pollen grains, flowers, fruits, and seeds. Methods for studying these fossils include computer tomography, electron microscopy, and light microscopy. Once the diversity and species composition of the flora is established, it will also be possible to draw conclusion on the palaeoecology of the flora, which will help us to understand what the vegetation and the environment looked like during the Late Cretaceous in the region that is now part of Central Europe. The research will be carried out by an international team of researchers with highly complementary expertise, including palaeobotanists, botanists, evolutionary biologists, geologists, and palynologists from Austria and the Czech Republic.