A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet - MNHN - Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Année : 2020

A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet

Tao Su
Robert Spicer
Fei-Xiang Wu
  • Fonction : Auteur
Alexander Farnsworth
Jian Huang
  • Fonction : Auteur
Tao Deng
Lin Ding
  • Fonction : Auteur
Wei-Yu-Dong Deng
  • Fonction : Auteur
Yong-Jiang Huang
Alice Hughes
Lin-Bo Jia
Jian-Hua Jin
Shu-Feng Li
Shui-Qing Liang
  • Fonction : Auteur
Jia Liu
Xiao-Yan Liu
  • Fonction : Auteur
Sarah Sherlock
  • Fonction : Auteur
Teresa Spicer
  • Fonction : Auteur
Gaurav Srivastava
He Tang
  • Fonction : Auteur
Paul Valdes
  • Fonction : Auteur
Teng-Xiang Wang
Mike Widdowson
  • Fonction : Auteur
Meng-Xiao Wu
  • Fonction : Auteur
Yao-Wu Xing
Cong-Li Xu
  • Fonction : Auteur
Jian Yang
Cong Zhang
Shi-Tao Zhang
Xin-Wen Zhang
Fan Zhao
  • Fonction : Auteur
Zhe-Kun Zhou

Résumé

Tibet’s ancient topography and its role in climatic and biotic evolution remain speculative due to a paucity of quantitative surface-height measurements through time and space, and sparse fossil records. However, newly discovered fossils from a present elevation of ∼4,850 m in central Tibet improve substantially our knowledge of the ancient Tibetan environment. The 70 plant fossil taxa so far recovered include the first occurrences of several modern Asian lineages and represent a Middle Eocene (∼47 Mya) humid subtropical ecosystem. The fossils not only record the diverse composition of the ancient Tibetan biota, but also allow us to constrain the Middle Eocene land surface height in central Tibet to ∼1,500 ± 900 m, and quantify the prevailing thermal and hydrological regime. This “Shangri-La”–like ecosystem experienced monsoon seasonality with a mean annual temperature of ∼19 °C, and frosts were rare. It contained few Gondwanan taxa, yet was compositionally similar to contemporaneous floras in both North America and Europe. Our discovery quantifies a key part of Tibetan Paleogene topography and climate, and highlights the importance of Tibet in regard to the origin of modern Asian plant species and the evolution of global biodiversity.

Dates et versions

mnhn-03499347 , version 1 (21-12-2021)

Identifiants

Citer

Tao Su, Robert Spicer, Fei-Xiang Wu, Alexander Farnsworth, Jian Huang, et al.. A Middle Eocene lowland humid subtropical “Shangri-La” ecosystem in central Tibet. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020, 117 (52), pp.32989-32995. ⟨10.1073/pnas.2012647117⟩. ⟨mnhn-03499347⟩

Collections

MNHN
28 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More