Polar wildfires and conifer serotiny during the Cretaceous globalhothouse

Several highly effective fire-adaptive traits first evolved among modern plants duringthe mid-Cretaceous, in response to the widespread wildfires promoted by anomalously highatmospheric oxygen (O2) and extreme temperatures. Serotiny, or long-term canopy seedstorage, is a fire-adaptive strategy common among plants living in fire-prone areas today,but evidence of this strategy has been lacking from the fossil record. Deposits of abundantfossil charcoal from sedimentary successions of the Chatham Islands, New Zealand, recordwildfires in the south polar regions (75°–80°S) during the mid-Cretaceous (ca. 99–90 Ma).Newly discovered fossil conifer reproductive structures were consistently associated withthese charcoal-rich deposits. The morphology and internal anatomy as revealed by neutrontomography exhibit a range of serotiny-associated characters. Numerous related fossils fromsimilar, contemporaneous deposits of the Northern Hemisphere suggest that serotiny was akey adaptive strategy during the high-fire world of the Cretaceous.Research was supported by the National Geographic Society (9761–15) and Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (P5524); additional financial support was from the Paleontological Society and Monash University