upcoming meetings and events:

May 22-25  HFSP Workshop on malformed spores & pollen grains in the fossil record (in Prague ).

May 26-30 IOPC/IPC Joint meeting of the International Organization of Palæobotany Conference and the International Organization of Palynology (Prague.)

June 10-16: Music residency at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Loughborough, Virginia. The band pictured below will be in residence for a week to pilot a future music residency program at the Oak Spring Garden. The Oak Spring Garden Foundation, headed by paleobotanist, Sir Peter Crane, is a non-profit foundation promoting regional culture and "...facilitating scholarship and public dialogue on the history and future of plants."

February 26: Plant Evolution: A Tapetum is now effectively present in all plant lineages by WA Taylor & PK Strother has been published as a Dispatch article in Current Biology. This commentary discusses the impact on evolution of the plant spore wall based on the research from John Bowman's Lab, Levins J., Dierschke T. & Bowman J.L. A subclass II bHLH transcription factor in Marchantia polymorpha gives insight into the ancestral land plant trait of spore formation. Curr. Biol. 2024; 34: 895-901. 

Research at the Palæobotany Laboratory at Weston Observatory investigates several related Evolutionary Themes - all of which concern fossil protists extracted from the geological record. The origin of Land Plants in the SIlurian, was preceded by a record of cryptospores that extends from Cambrian Series 2, and we are responsible for creating the taxonomy of many of the cryptospores of Cambrian and Ordovician age. Together with coworkers at Utrecht University and elsewhere, we are in the early stages of documenting a fossil record of the Euglenophyceae - the photosynthetic euglenoids. Lakes through Time is our program that includes Precambrian and Palæozoic non-marine deposits - primarily the Mid-Continent Rift Nonesuch Shale and the Torridonian Sequence in Scotland. The discovery of fossil holozoans in phosphate nodules of the Diabaig shales at Loch Torridon in Scotland has opened up a new research line into the origins of cell differentiation and development in the unicellular ancestors of the animals.

"In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable, since for every massing of human beings there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites." (Cobb 1914)

Paul K. Strother

email: strother@bc.edu

Palæobotany Laboratory

Weston Observatory of Boston College

381 Concord Rd

Weston, Massachusetts MA02493