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Mesozoic and Cenozoic plant evolution and biotic change: A symposium in honor of Ruth Stockey

Klymiuk, Ashley A. [1], Smith, Selena Y. [2], Little, Stefan A. [3].

Mesozoic and Cenozoic plant evolution and biotic change: A symposium in honor of Ruth A. Stockey.

This joint symposium and colloquium honours Dr. Ruth A. Stockey for her many contributions to botany. Ruth is a Professor Emeritus of the University of Alberta, where she enjoyed a 30-year career after succeeding Wilson N. Stewart as botany professor and curator of UAPC-ALTA (University of Alberta Paleobotanical Herbarium). In Alberta, Ruth collaborated with professional and avocational paleontologists to document Cretaceous plants in Dinosaur Provincial Park, and Paleocene successions near Red Deer, AB, which remain the most comprehensively known paleobotanical localities in the province. Ruth and her students also intensively documented and described several fossil floras that have significantly enhanced our understanding of plant diversity and floristic change in North America through critical periods of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. For example, the early Cretaceous Apple Bay locality of Vancouver Island has emerged as an unprecedented window into floristic diversity immediately preceding the angiosperm radiation, and has substantially improved our understanding of the radiation of filicalean ferns and gymnosperms, including gnetophytes, cycads, cycadeoids, and conifers. The permineralized Eocene floras of the Princeton Chert (an in-situ mire assemblage in southern British Columbia), and the Appian Way locality of Vancouver Island (a near-shore marine assemblage) reflect diversity during the Eocene global greenhouse period – the warmest paleoclimates to which the Laurasian continents have been subject at their present latitudes. The morning symposium highlights new and continuing research into floras that Ruth has described, and new advances in understanding Mesozoic and Cenozoic landscapes. Ruth’s research has not only spanned a diversity of geological periods but a diversity of organisms as well. The body of her work includes systematic descriptions of fossil gymnosperms, angiosperms, pteridophytes, lycophytes, bryophytes, and fungi. These studies have been conducted within an explicitly comparative and evolutionary context, and Ruth’s work has informed not only paleobotany, but studies of living plants as well. The afternoon colloquium will highlight research building upon topics and systems that Ruth has been an active contributor to, thereby reflecting the breadth of her past and continuing research interests.


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1 - University Of Kansas, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Rm 45Takeru Higuchi Hall, Kansas Biological Survey, 2101 Constant Ave, Lawrence, KS, 66047, USA
2 - University Of Michigan, Department Of Geology, 1100 North University Avenue, 2534 CC Little Building, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA
3 - Universite Paris-Sud, Laboratoire Ecologie, Systematique, Evolution, CNRS UMR 8079, bat. 360, Orsay, 91405, France

Keywords:
paleobotany
Evolution
systematics
Mesozoic
Cenozoic
plant anatomy.

Presentation Type: Symposium Presentation
Session: SY14
Location: Salon 5/The Shaw Conference Centre
Date: Wednesday, July 29th, 2015
Time: 8:00 AM
Number: SY14SUM
Abstract ID:27
Candidate for Awards:None


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