Reconstructing fossil-rich East Asian amber forests using inclusions of seed plants

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Amber, fossilized plant resin, is a valuable source for palaeobotany, since it preserves plant fossils in high fidelity, including minute and fragile botanical structures which are otherwise rare in the fossil record. In the past years, East Asian amber deposits of Myanmar (mid-Cretaceous), Fushun (China, early Eocene) and Zhangpu (China, middle Miocene) revealed a tremendously increasing number of inclusions; however, research interests were mainly focused on arthropod, other invertebrate and even vertebrate inclusions. Fossil seed plants from these East Asian ambers are still virtually unstudied. Thus, source forests of East Asian ambers have been basically interpreted on the basis of arthropod inclusions, leading to contradictory results. In the proposed study, I aim to investigate seed plant inclusions from Burmese, Fushun and Zhangpu amber deposits for reconstructing their source forests. Although plant inclusions are well preserved, morphological key features are often hidden inside of the inclusion and not accessible using standard light microscopy. Therefore, I aim to apply new state-of-the-art X-ray imaging techniques, including microCT and synchrotron X-ray tomography. These new techniques enable studying internal morphologies of plant inclusions which allows assigning the inclusion at least to family level. I will then compare the found plant taxa to their closest extinct or living relative in order to analyze their palaeoecological requirements. I will use this information to reconstruct the vegetation of the East Asian amber floras, the habitat types and the structure of their source forests. This is relevant for a profound palaeoecological evaluation of the plethora of invertebrates and vertebrate inclusions recovered from these ambers. Furthermore, my study has the potential to provide significant keys for understanding terrestrial palaeoecosystems of East Asia and their evolution in time and space, as well as palaeobiogeographic patterns and the evolutionary history of specific plant lineages.