Eastern Asian endemic seed plant genera and their paleogeographic history throughout the N

Eastern Asian endemic seed plant genera and their paleogeographic history throughout the Northern

Hemisphere

Steven R. MANCHESTER;Zhi-Duan CHEN;An-Ming LU;Kazuhiko UEMURA

【期刊名称】《植物分类学报》

【年(卷),期】2009(047)001

【摘要】We review the fossil history of seed plant genera that are now endemic to eastern Asia. Although the majority of eastern Asian endemic genera have no known fossil record at all, 54 genera, or about 9%, are reliably known from the fossil record. Most of these are woody (with two exceptions), and most are today either broadly East Asian, or more specifically confined to Sino-Japanese subcategory rather than being endemic to the Sino-Himalayan area. Of the "eastern Asian endemic" genera so far known from the fossil record, the majority formerly occurred in Europe and/or North America, indicating that eastern Asia served as a late Tertiary or Quaternary refugium for taxa. Hence, many of these genera may have originated in other parts of the Northern Hemisphere and expanded their ranges across continents and former sea barriers when tectonic and climatic conditions al-lowed, leading to their arrival in eastern Asia. Although clear evidence for paleoendemism is provided by the gymnosperms Amentotaxus, Cathaya, Cephalotaxus, Cunninghamia, Cryptomeria, Glyptostrobus,