CIMA team reveals a new plant species

The team of researchers from the CretaCarbo project, developed at the University of the Algarve's Marine and Environmental Research Center (CIMA) and coordinated by researcher Mário Mendes, recently discovered a new species of spore attributable to ferns from the Anemiaceae family. Designated with the scientific name Costatoperforosporites friisiae, this species has only been identified in Portuguese paleofloras.

Plants are organisms that are extremely sensitive to climate change on a continental scale and therefore bear witness to the paleoenvironmental changes that have affected the Earth's environment. The CretaCarbo project aims precisely to understand the paleoenvironmental conditions that led to the radiation and development of angiosperms (flowering plants), which developed from the Lower Cretaceous about 135 million years ago and are responsible for colonizing almost all terrestrial ecosystems. The identification of this new species is an excellent contribution to the objectives of the CretaCarbo project and also to the advancement of palaeobotany in our country.

Mário Mendes explains that "the study of fossil plants is of great palaeoecological interest, as it allows us to draw conclusions about the local and regional palaeoclimatology of that time, particularly with regard to temperature and rainfall anomalies". Fossil plants are a central framework for understanding the organization and functioning of paleocommunities and through the study of fossil flora we can better understand modern flora.

Paleobotany is economically important in the study of fossil plant remains, which are indispensable, for example, for research into energy raw materials such as oil or charcoal. The results of this research, which has aroused great interest among many researchers from other countries such as France, Japan, Sweden, Germany and Spain, were recently published in an internationally circulated scientific journal indexed in the ISI Web of Science.

The CretaCarbo Project (PTDC/CTE-GIX, 113983/2009) is funded by FCT and has the University of Coimbra and the New University of Lisbon as partners.

(From UAlg - University of the Algarve news. See full article.)