Taxacom: "Early Permian" angiosperms... real or not real taxa/names?

Fri Jun 3 02:30:26 CDT 2022

I will address a couple of Michael's points as best I can, and leave the
remainder to others more qualified than myself...

Here are a couple of key references: K. Salomo et al., 2017, "The Emergence
of Earliest Angiosperms May be Earlier than Fossil Evidence
Indicates", Systematic Botany (2017), 42(4): pp. 1–13,
doi: 10.1600/036364417X696438; P.S. Herendeen et al., 2017,
"Palaeobotanical redux: revisiting the age of the angiosperms", NATURE
PLANTS 3, 17015, doi: 10.1038/nplants.2017.15

RE my comment "....unless I am mistaken, these are only hypothetical dates
based on
suggestions from molecular evidence"

Michael said: These 'hypothetical dates" are widely accepted as more than
that - even as
empirical proof of age - by many, many, many people, including a number of
individuals on Taxacom. ... The suggestions do not come from 'molecular
evidence' but from fossils that
are used to calibrate divergence.

My new comment: Salomo et al. use the phrase "age estimates" 28 times in
their paper. That is not the same as empirical proof of age. The estimates
are based on a number of assumptions which may or may not prove to be
correct. Actually I do not have a problem with Salermo et al's main
conclusion, which puts the divergence of angiosperms and gymnosperms in the
Late Permian, leaving the entire succeeding Triassic and Jurassic periods
for either highly cryptic, or opportunistically non preserved, evidence of
evolution based on fossils known to date. Even then,  Wachtler's claim of
well preserved, and evolutionary well developed, "angiosperm flowers" from
the Early Permian would seem hardly credible.

I wrote:  "So far as I am aware there are still no "accepted" pre-Cretaceous
angiosperm fossils."

Michael said:  I note that "accepted" is in quote marks.'Accepted' by whom
and of what
significance?

My new comment: Salomo et al. state: " exceptionally old fossils
representing extant, relatively deeply nested lineages in angiosperm
phylogeny also support the emerging hypothesis that the phylogenetic root
of angiosperms is much older than suspected. These fossils include a
Ranunculaceae member (Leefructus, 125.8–122.6 MYA; Sun et al. 2011), and a
probable Poaceae-Pooideae fossil from the Early Cretaceous (110–100 MYA;
Poinar 2004, 2011)". Neither Leefructus or the other other fossil cited
pre-dates the Cretaceous.

Herendeen et al. state: " no angiosperms have been discovered in the
mesofossil floras from the earliest part of the Cretaceous and from the
Jurassic that have been investigated.", then below: " Several putative
angiosperm fossils described from the Early Cretaceous are problematic for
various reasons and fail to provide evidence of an angiosperm
relationship.", and " Excluding occasional examples where key specimens
from the Cretaceous had been stratigraphically misassigned to the Jurassic
(such as Archaefructus), these older fossils fall into two groups: (1)
intriguing fossils for which there is insufficient information to assess
their affinities (for example, Sanmiguelia lewisii Brown from the Triassic
of Texas, United States; Phyllites sp. from the Jurassic Stonesfield Slate,
England); and (2) fossils claimed as angiosperms for which evidence of an
angiosperm relationship is either weak or non-existent. ...  Scattered
reports of putative angiosperms from Jurassic and earlier rocks appear to
challenge the conclusion made more than 50 years ago, that no unequivocal
angiosperm remains have yet been described from rocks older than Early
Cretaceous , but so far none of them withstand careful scrutiny. In some
cases, fossil material from the Triassic and Jurassic presents interesting
features that document extinct diversity among seed plants that may or may
not be related to angiosperms, but the absence of critical details, or
knowledge of other parts of these parent plants, currently precludes their
assignment to angiosperms. In other cases (for example many of the fossils
discussed above), interpretations of angiosperm features, generally in very
poorly preserved fossil material, are not credible."

I previously stated: "in any case there is at least a 150 million year
difference
between the  start of the Permian and the start of the Cretaceous periods
(with all of the Triassic and Jurassic between), so something is badly
amiss..."

To which Michael replied: Really? By what authority in science? What is the
scientific criteria for a
fossil gap to be believable? 10 Ma, 50 Ma? 100 Ma? 150 Ma?

My current comment would be that many Permian, Triassic, Jurassic and
earliest Cretaceous rocks have been searched for evidence of angiosperm
fossils, and none have ever been recovered. So yes, by my reckoning (not
specifically numerical), this is a major gap. Even angiosperm pollen, again
that could have been found in thousands if not millions of routinely
analysed palynological samples, has never been detected from rocks of this
age, or any for the next 150 million years. From Herendeen et al: "Since
the 1960s, there has been a massive increase in the availability of fossil
pollen data. These data have been collected from all over the world for a
variety of purposes, including exploration geology, from strata of Late
Devonian age through to the present. These data, comprising thousands of
samples and millions of individual pollen records, have so far failed to
document unequivocal angiosperm pollen prior to the Early Cretaceous."

At this point my critical faculties probably desert me on account of lack
of additional relevant specialist knowledge. However I would reiterate, if
Wachtler's claim of well preserved angiosperm flowers from the Early
Permian period had credibility, it would be the paleobotanical find of the
decade and probably the century. The fact that no other workers have even
commented on his claims does suggest to me that they are hardly taken
seriously by his paleobotanical peers at this time (although I am very
happy to be proved wrong of course).

Regards - Tony

On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 at 15:42, Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Tony, yes, the dates are hypothetical. But so are identifications of
> fossils.
>
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 11:12 AM Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Michael, yes but unless I am mistaken, these are only hypothetical
>> dates based on suggestions from molecular evidence. So far as I am aware
>> there are still no "accepted" pre-Cretaceous angiosperm fossils. Were
>> Mr/Dr Wachtler's "Early Permian angiosperms" to be authenticated by other
>> workers the results would be a paleobotanical sensation, which is I suspect
>> why they have been published outside the mainstream literature, more than
>> likely without peer review...
>>
>> I still wonder what it is he is describing, though...
>>
>> Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=EeHt3ZxkxySRnY4j6e%2F2YA2FNahvBBVYCCuAkixZoeM%3D&reserved=0
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 at 07:10, Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Tony,
>>>
>>> Dates for angiosperms in recent studies include:
>>> Triassic to Late Permian (Beaulieu et al., 2015); Triassic-Permian
>>> (Zhang et al., 2020); Triassic-Carboniferous (Salomo et al., 2017), and
>>> Permian (Yang et al., 2020).
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 8:09 AM Tony Rees via Taxacom <
>>> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Taxacomers,
>>>>
>>>> As some of you will be aware, with IRMNG (the Interim Register of Marine
>>>> and Nonmarine Genera) I attempt to compile a synoptic list of published
>>>> genus names, arranged in a "management classification" (an attempt at
>>>> synthesis of what seems to be current practise in the literature), for
>>>> all
>>>> life i.e. animals, plants and more (including the most obscure
>>>> microfossils, viruses and prokaryotes).
>>>>
>>>> Currently I am attempting to back fill some gaps in recently published
>>>> fossil plant names and came across this work and some of its associated
>>>> publications: "The Evolution of the First Flowers Early Permian
>>>> Angiosperms" by Michael Wachtler, apparently more or less self
>>>> published by
>>>> the Dolomythos Museum, Italy, see
>>>>
>>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FWachtler-Michael%2Fpublication%2F341323347_The_Evolution_of_the_First_Flowers_-_Early_Permian_Angiosperms%2Flinks%2F5ebac7e392851c11a8620fbc%2FThe-Evolution-of-the-First-Flowers-Early-Permian-Angiosperms.pdf&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=FDozaR15974PG3dt59LY7NgZBjeG5FL6neYh%2FZ%2FTAPg%3D&reserved=0
>>>> , in which he establishes a number of new genera and species for what he
>>>> insists are new Permian angiosperm flowers, a contention carried
>>>> through to
>>>> a number of other, similar works.
>>>>
>>>> Since otherwise, the earliest accepted angiosperm fossils do not appear
>>>> until the Cretaceous (refer e.g. Herendeen et al. 2017,
>>>>
>>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fnplants201715&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=YmD%2F%2FLK17LP655h9twO1Hxbw9Xl7L%2Fjp8duBTouL9Ps%3D&reserved=0),
>>>> one is forced to the
>>>> conclusion that either Wachtler's fossils are not angiosperms, or not
>>>> Permian, or perhaps not either, although they do look like flowers from
>>>> his
>>>> pictures. Perhaps the dating is wrong - I am no specialist in such
>>>> matters;
>>>> but in any case there is at least a 150 million year difference between
>>>> the
>>>> start of the Permian and the start of the Cretaceous periods (with all
>>>> of
>>>> the Triassic and Jurassic between), so something is badly amiss...
>>>>
>>>> Nevertheless, I am wondering whether Wachtler's published names should
>>>> stand, from a nomenclatural point of view, irrespective of the
>>>> "challenging" ages ascribed to them, or whether they do not merit
>>>> inclusion
>>>> in my system on the basis of possibly invalid publication (which does
>>>> not
>>>> seem to be the case) or other considerations. I note of interest, that
>>>> Wachtler's publications do seem to be cited by no-one but himself, which
>>>> does raise a bit of a red flag...
>>>>
>>>> Your opinions welcome!
>>>>
>>>> Thanks in advance - Tony
>>>>
>>>> Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
>>>>
>>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=EeHt3ZxkxySRnY4j6e%2F2YA2FNahvBBVYCCuAkixZoeM%3D&reserved=0
>>>>
>>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irmng.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=eOgmtzReLrMRFYzdkAO6nw%2BrbZlGR77xZQD%2BHZNM11g%3D&reserved=0
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>>>>
>>>> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for about 35 years,
>>>> 1987-2022.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dunedin, New Zealand.
>>>
>>> My books:
>>>
>>> *Biogeography and evolution in New Zealand. *Taylor and Francis/CRC,
>>> Boca Raton FL. 2017.
>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.routledge.com%2FBiogeography-and-Evolution-in-New-Zealand%2FHeads%2Fp%2Fbook%2F9781498751872&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=tn6UWKW9D%2Fe6jY2og%2F8ZzvCI7h2EbE2nvlcwiQxSnK0%3D&reserved=0
>>>
>>>
>>> *Biogeography of Australasia:  A molecular analysis*. Cambridge
>>> University Press, Cambridge. 2014. https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridge.org%2F9781107041028&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=NLZJLvl1zco0zKK%2BMa6RcHVcFD87icAOxFTTbQm5WLA%3D&reserved=0
>>>
>>>
>>> *Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University of California
>>> Press, Berkeley. 2012. https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ucpress.edu%2Fbook.php%3Fisbn%3D9780520271968&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=U4gnyqwhTT8FUCe%2B6sRZbqIAciTo2MACTh%2Fx89Zb0SQ%3D&reserved=0
>>>
>>>
>>> *Panbiogeography: Tracking the history of life*. Oxford University
>>> Press, New York. 1999. (With R. Craw and J. Grehan).
>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.co.nz%2Fbooks%3Fid%3DBm0_QQ3Z6GUC&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GGndoHI1zU8ybTzuAAUoJJ%2BFv0NBDPNFbsP%2BpMEvIPY%3D&reserved=0
>>> <https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.co.nz%2Fbooks%3Fid%3DBm0_QQ3Z6GUC%26dq%3Dpanbiogeography%26source%3Dgbs_navlinks_s&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7QnspqV7FFxfOdDG00GBxfw%2FUQil1%2FTJ7K5nb9pDcEY%3D&reserved=0>
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>
> --
> Dunedin, New Zealand.
>
> My books:
>
> *Biogeography and evolution in New Zealand. *Taylor and Francis/CRC, Boca
> Raton FL. 2017.
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.routledge.com%2FBiogeography-and-Evolution-in-New-Zealand%2FHeads%2Fp%2Fbook%2F9781498751872&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=tn6UWKW9D%2Fe6jY2og%2F8ZzvCI7h2EbE2nvlcwiQxSnK0%3D&reserved=0
>
>
> *Biogeography of Australasia:  A molecular analysis*. Cambridge
> University Press, Cambridge. 2014. https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridge.org%2F9781107041028&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=NLZJLvl1zco0zKK%2BMa6RcHVcFD87icAOxFTTbQm5WLA%3D&reserved=0
>
>
> *Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University of California
> Press, Berkeley. 2012. https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ucpress.edu%2Fbook.php%3Fisbn%3D9780520271968&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=U4gnyqwhTT8FUCe%2B6sRZbqIAciTo2MACTh%2Fx89Zb0SQ%3D&reserved=0
>
>
> *Panbiogeography: Tracking the history of life*. Oxford University Press,
> New York. 1999. (With R. Craw and J. Grehan).
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.co.nz%2Fbooks%3Fid%3DBm0_QQ3Z6GUC&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GGndoHI1zU8ybTzuAAUoJJ%2BFv0NBDPNFbsP%2BpMEvIPY%3D&reserved=0
> <https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.co.nz%2Fbooks%3Fid%3DBm0_QQ3Z6GUC%26dq%3Dpanbiogeography%26source%3Dgbs_navlinks_s&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5601ea70e67943ef717508da4532f76b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637898382591028563%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7QnspqV7FFxfOdDG00GBxfw%2FUQil1%2FTJ7K5nb9pDcEY%3D&reserved=0>
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