CIMA team reveals a new plant species

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

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 terrestrial environment. The CretaCarbo project aims precisely to understand the paleoenvironmental conditions that governed the radiation and development of angiosperms (flowering plants), which developed from the Lower Cretaceous period, around 135 million years ago, and are responsible for the colonization of almost all terrestrial ecosystems. The identification of this new species is an excellent contribution to the pursuit of the CretaCarbo project's objectives and also to the advancement of paleobotany in our country.

Mário Mendes explains that "the study of fossil plants is of great paleoecological interest, as it allows us to draw conclusions about the local and regional paleoclimatology of that period, particularly with regard to temperature and precipitation anomalies." Fossil plants are a key milestone in understanding the organization and functioning of paleocommunities, and through the study of fossil flora, modern flora can be better understood.

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 attracted considerable interest from numerous researchers in other countries, such as France, Japan, Sweden, Germany, and Spain, were recently published in an international 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.

(Based on news from UAlg - University of Algarve. See full article.)