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Impact of being evergreen or deciduous on the wood anatomy of the trees in polar regions during the warm geological period : case study from Upper Cretaceous of the James Ross Island (Antarctic Peninsula)
Chernomorets, Oleksandra ; Sakala, Jakub (advisor) ; Gryc, Vladimír (referee)
Global warming and its influence on the environment has become a popular and widespread issue. Nowadays, an analogy of a high latitude ecosystem during the greenhouse type of climate does not exist. The Cretaceous polar ecosystem gave us a unique possibility of understanding these extreme ecosystems and the specific adaptations of organisms to these conditions. Such types of ecosystem are crucial for a better understanding of possible future climate changes. This thesis focusses on the adaptation strategies of land plants during the Late Cretaceous in the Arctic peninsula. The land plants responded to these specific solar conditionals in two different ways: evergreen or deciduous. The fossil material for this study comes from Brandy Bay and Crame Col, James Ross Island, Antarctic. The material was collected in a continuous sequence from Kotic point to Santa Marta Formation (Cenomanian - Companian). A detailed and systematic analysis was performed on five out of fifty-five samples that well represented the studied region and age: Agathoxylon kellerense, Agathoxylon antarcticus, Araucarioxylon chapmanae, Podocarpoxylon multiparenchymatosum and Phoroxylon sp. Based on the detailed study of Agathoxylon kellerense (sample number AN34) wood anatomy and growth rings structure, adaptation strategies were...
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Impact of being evergreen or deciduous on the wood anatomy of the trees in polar regions during the warm geological period : case study from Upper Cretaceous of the James Ross Island (Antarctic Peninsula)
Chernomorets, Oleksandra ; Sakala, Jakub (advisor) ; Gryc, Vladimír (referee)
Global warming and its influence on the environment has become a popular and widespread issue. Nowadays, an analogy of a high latitude ecosystem during the greenhouse type of climate does not exist. The Cretaceous polar ecosystem gave us a unique possibility of understanding these extreme ecosystems and the specific adaptations of organisms to these conditions. Such types of ecosystem are crucial for a better understanding of possible future climate changes. This thesis focusses on the adaptation strategies of land plants during the Late Cretaceous in the Arctic peninsula. The land plants responded to these specific solar conditionals in two different ways: evergreen or deciduous. The fossil material for this study comes from Brandy Bay and Crame Col, James Ross Island, Antarctic. The material was collected in a continuous sequence from Kotic point to Santa Marta Formation (Cenomanian - Companian). A detailed and systematic analysis was performed on five out of fifty-five samples that well represented the studied region and age: Agathoxylon kellerense, Agathoxylon antarcticus, Araucarioxylon chapmanae, Podocarpoxylon multiparenchymatosum and Phoroxylon sp. Based on the detailed study of Agathoxylon kellerense (sample number AN34) wood anatomy and growth rings structure, adaptation strategies were...
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Aspects of the high latitude environments in Cretaceous and Paleogene with special respect to land plants
Chernomorets, Oleksandra ; Sakala, Jakub (advisor) ; Dašková, Jiřina (referee)
This work is focused on the problematics of high latitudes in Cretaceous and Paleogene. The introduction describes and defines high latitude regions as well as their main characteristics nowadays. This allows one to achieve a better understanding of the substantial differences of these regions nowadays and in the geological past. The work itself then provides a brief description of the palaeographic position of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, their palaeoclimatic situations, organisms inhabiting their terrestrial and marine environments and their adaptation mechanisms. Further, a more detailed review of the land plants is presented. The last part is dedicated to the specific survival strategies of the land plants in the polar regions during the warm geological periods. On the basis of the studied literature, this work attempts to answer the questions: which strategy for adaptation to the high latitudes was used by the plants and whether being evergreen or deciduous was more effective on survival during the long and relatively warm polar nights. In conclusion, the relevance of the research of high latitude regions during the Cretaceous and Paleogene greenhouse type of climate is introduced in relation to the possible future consequences of the global warming. Key words: Cretaceous, Paleogene, land...
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