Palaeobotany uses fossil plants to reconstruct past environments and ecosystems. However, one of its most important functions is to reconstruct palaeoclimate – for times when no direct measurements exist. Leaves, wood, pollen, and whole fossil floras preserve information about temperature, rainfall, seasonality, and atmospheric conditions, but that information is always filtered through biology, ecology, and taphonomy.
Posts in this category particular fossil floras, and highlight some of the plants found within them – and show how they are used as climate proxies. Specific case studies range from New Zealand’s Jurassic fossil forests at Curio Bay, to the Miocene Manuherikia Group, as well as elsewhere. But the broader aim is methodological: how reliably can fossil plants tell us about past climates, and what happens when different lines of evidence disagree?
Together, these posts form a connected body of work on reconstructing deep-time environments, mainly through plants – combining field work, quantitative methods, and critical evaluation of published palaeoclimate work.