Fossil dogwood alive in eastern Asia.Fossil dogwood dogwood or cornel (kôr`nəl), shrub or tree of the genus Cornus, chiefly of north temperate and tropical mountain regions, characteristically having an inconspicuous flower surrounded by large, showy bracts which alive in eastern ASIA Asia (ā`zhə), the world's largest continent, 17,139,000 sq mi (44,390,000 sq km), with about 3.3 billion people, nearly three fifths of the world's total population. The last of its kind had fallen in a lush tropical forest, some 4 million years ago--or so botanists reckoned. Apparently only fossils remained of this unique group of nut-bearing trees belonging to the dogwood family. But when two paleobotanists compared the fossil dogwood's woody fruits with those of the living Diplopanax stachyanthus -- a rare, East Asian species classified within another family--they saw nuts of a not-so-different color. Diplopanax stachyanthus, they found, is a "living fossil," a member of an "extinct" genus of dogwoods that once flourished over much of Europe and Asia. Paleobotanists Richard Eyde and Xiang Qiuyun report their discovery in the May AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY The American Journal of Botany (ISSN 0002-9122) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal which includes research papers on all aspects of plant biology. The American Journal of Botany is published by the Botanical Society of America and has been published on a monthly basis . Working at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History For the museum in Manhattan, see . This article is about the museum in Washington, D.C.. For other uses, see National Museum of Natural History (disambiguation). The National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., Eyde and Qiuyun, now at Washington State University Washington State University, at Pullman; land-grant and state supported; chartered 1890, opened 1892 as an agriculture college. From 1905 to 1959 it was the State College of Washington. in Pullman, examined 15-million-year-old pecan-shaped fruits of a dogwood sub-family Mastixioideae, and compared them with those of a modern Diplopanax. The shape of their seed chambers, a key taxonomic feature of the dogwoods, proved nearly identical. Diplopanax was discovered in China in 1928, but classified then as a member of Araliaceae, the ginseng family. Botanists first suspected a dogwood lurking in the ginseng ranks in 1978, but not until Eyde and Qiuyunheld it up to its ancient ancestors last year did Diplopanax emerge as the lost survivor of the woody-fruited dogwoods. Eyde died from cancer last week, only a few days before his discovery was published. Steven R. Manchester of Indiana University in Bloomington, believes Eyde and Qiuyun's discovery will help clarify his and fellow paleobotanists' deductions about plant life in prehistoric forests back to 65 million years ago. Manchester has been examining scattered bits of fossilized fos·sil·ize v. fos·sil·ized, fos·sil·iz·ing, fos·sil·iz·es v.tr. 1. To convert into a fossil. 2. To make outmoded or inflexible with time; antiquate. v.intr. plants -- like pieces of a petrified pet·ri·fy v. pet·ri·fied, pet·ri·fy·ing, pet·ri·fies v.tr. 1. To convert (wood or other organic matter) into a stony replica by petrifaction. 2. jigsaw puzzle -- to reconstruct extinct species and infer their environs. Now, in Diplopanax, he has a living model showing how some of the ancient pieces might fit. |
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