Author Topic: Cypress Trees Saw Rupturing of Earth's Supercontinents  (Read 837 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Online Buster's Uncle

  • With community service, I
  • Ascend
  • *
  • Posts: 49436
  • €187
  • View Inventory
  • Send /Gift
  • Because there are times when people just need a cute puppy  Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur  A WONDERFUL concept, Unity - & a 1-way trip that cost 400 trillion & 40 yrs.  
  • AC2 is my instrument, my heart, as I play my song.
  • Planet tales writer Smilie Artist Custom Faction Modder AC2 Wiki contributor Downloads Contributor
    • View Profile
    • My Custom Factions
    • Awards
Cypress Trees Saw Rupturing of Earth's Supercontinents
« on: May 06, 2012, 05:24:45 PM »
Quote
Cypress Trees Saw Rupturing of Earth's Supercontinents
By Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com – 17 hrs ago...

 
Early members of an ancient family of trees, the cypresses, grew on the supercontinent Pangaea, and when this giant continent split apart, it shaped the future of these trees, according to research that examined the evolution of these trees, which today include giant redwoods and sequoias.
 
More than 200 million years ago, Pangaea contained all the modern continents, squished up against one another. The separation of these continents isolated populations of living things, putting them on different evolutionary paths.
 
Scientists have already found evidence of the separation of the continents in the family histories of reptiles, amphibians and mammals.
 
"Until now, there has been no equivalent evidence for any plant family," writes an international team of researchers in a study published May 1 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
 
The cypress family, Cupressaceae, a group of conifers with scalelike leaves, is believed to have originated more than 200 million years ago, when Pangaea was still intact, according to the researchers.
 
By looking at changes in the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, the code that makes up genes) of 122 species of cypress, the researchers were able to reconstruct a timeline for their evolution. They also included fossil evidence in the analysis.
 
The most recently evolved subfamilies of cypress, Cupressoideae and Callitroideae, split from each other about 153 million years ago, as the two remnants of Pangaea pulled away from each other. The northern half, Laurasia, contained what would become North America, Greenland, Europe and much of Asia, while the southern half, Gondwana, would later become South America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia.
 
The legacy remains. Living members of Cupressoideae occur mainly in former Laurasian continents, while Callitroideae are found on the fragments of what was Gondwana, write the researchers led by Kangshan Mao of Lanzhou University, China.
 
Cypress are now found on all continents except Antarctica, they note.
http://news.yahoo.com/cypress-trees-saw-rupturing-earths-supercontinents-222832223.html

 

* User

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Select language:

* Community poll

SMAC v.4 SMAX v.2 (or previous versions)
-=-
24 (7%)
XP Compatibility patch
-=-
9 (2%)
Gog version for Windows
-=-
103 (32%)
Scient (unofficial) patch
-=-
40 (12%)
Kyrub's latest patch
-=-
14 (4%)
Yitzi's latest patch
-=-
89 (28%)
AC for Mac
-=-
3 (0%)
AC for Linux
-=-
6 (1%)
Gog version for Mac
-=-
10 (3%)
No patch
-=-
16 (5%)
Total Members Voted: 314
AC2 Wiki Logo
-click pic for wik-

* Random quote

You are orphans, earthdeirdre, your homeworld already buried so young among the aeons. Yet now you fill the skies where we watched a million sunsets with flame and contrails, paying no heed to the hard lessons the universe has tried to teach you. Are you a breath of life to invigorate a complacent world, you earthhumans, or an insidious cancer which must be excised?
~Lady Deirdre Skye ’Conversations With Planet’

* Select your theme

*
Templates: 5: index (default), PortaMx/Mainindex (default), PortaMx/Frames (default), Display (default), GenericControls (default).
Sub templates: 8: init, html_above, body_above, portamx_above, main, portamx_below, body_below, html_below.
Language files: 4: index+Modifications.english (default), TopicRating/.english (default), PortaMx/PortaMx.english (default), OharaYTEmbed.english (default).
Style sheets: 0: .
Files included: 45 - 1228KB. (show)
Queries used: 35.

[Show Queries]