Royal ferns nearly vanished after ancient warming, study shows
Urrea MJ, Yañez A, Flores JR
Climate Adaptation
The royal fern you might grow beside a pond today is a survivor of a 180-million-year slump that started when a Jurassic-era global warming spike wiped out most of its relatives.
Osmundaceae, the family that includes today's royal and cinnamon ferns, once ruled forest floors when dinosaurs roamed. Scientists combined fossil evidence with DNA from living species to show that a period of ancient ocean warming and low oxygen, about 180 million years ago, triggered a die-off so severe the group never really rebounded until the last few million years. The research also pinpoints Antarctica, ice-free at the time, as the birthplace of this ancient fern lineage.
Key Findings
Fertile leptopteroid ferns radiated in the Early Permian around 289.32 million years ago
Diversification stalled and extinction rates rose sharply following the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, with recovery delayed until the Miocene
Antarctica is identified as the primary center of radiation for crown leptopteroids, diversifying from a relict population rather than by dispersal
chevron_right Technical Summary
A study tracing 300 million years of fern history shows that royal ferns and their relatives suffered a long, slow extinction after a major ancient global warming event, only recovering their diversity in the last few million years.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Total-evidence dating analysis of Osmundaceae reveals long-term extinction amid global climatic and palaeogeographic changes.
Research efforts have focused on assessing how diversification, morphological evolution, and biogeographic history drive diversity across a wide array of taxonomic groups; however, their interplay ...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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Osmundastrum cinnamomeum, commonly known as the cinnamon fern or the buckhorn fern, is a species of royal fern native to the Americas and Asia. It is the sole living representative of the genus Osmundastrum, which was separated from Osmunda after modern phylogenetic studies demonstrated that Osmu...