Paleobotany to understand evolution and biodiversity in Mexico

Abstract

Paleobotany bears an invaluable source of knowledge for understanding the history of the biodiversity that we protect and care for today. This discipline is recognized as a source of information on physical, ecological, and biological events and processes that occurred in the past and are maintained today, but whose occurrences must be interpreted necessarily, and sometimes with limitations, solely from the lithosphere. The importance of studying past life from Mexico and addressing fossil plant reconstruction is highlighted to understand modern biodiversity. Fossils in Mexico have been studied marginally but contain valuable information to understand the history of biodiversity, both in Mexico and globally. We examined the extent to which Mexican fossils can contribute to understanding the origin and development of biological processes through time, and how past plant biodiversity in Mexico compares with the extant one. We used two sources to address these questions: (i) ideas on biological processes as seen through the fossil record, and (ii) fossils known from Mexico. Examples are given of how fossils, morphology, anatomy, and numerical methods, as well as genetics and physiology, illuminate each other to generate solid botanical concepts. The abundant and widely distributed outcrops with fossil plants suggest that further studies on Mexican material will be influential for varied biological hypotheses related to the origin and history of biodiversity. Mexican fossil plants and their scarce sampled localities are open to further investigation that will complement hypotheses on the historic discussion of biological processes.