Alexis Rastier 🌿

Excited to share our research on the evolution of fossil forests from the Devonian to Jurassic! By analyzing 38 global fossil forests, we explored key parameters to better understand how these fossil forests developed over time.

doi.org/10.1016/j.ea...

🌵Deadline alert! #Botany2026 Symposia & Colloquia Proposals are due October 16. Help shape the scientific program for our Tucson meeting, themed Biodiversity at the Boundaries!

Submit your proposal and get details here: mailchi.mp/botany.org/b...

or here: www.botanyconference.org

#iamabotanist

Fig. 2 Plant diversification and leaf evolution in the context of the fossil record of land plants.

✨ Paper spotlight ✨

(🧵 1/6) Leaf evolution: integrating phylogenetics, developmental dynamics, and genetic insights across land plants
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

And some of the fossils have arrived in Montpellier just in time for #FossilFriday 🎉
Most of them are stems with their tissues and cells preserved in 3D. They will be prepared as thin-sections & observed under the microscope to find out what plants they belonged to 🌿⛏️🔬 #paleobotany

This approximately 15m-long fossil tree trunk from the Angeac-Charente bonebed of Early Cretaceous France is insane.
#paleontology #paleobotany #botany

In May and Jully 2025, I presented some new results from my PhD dedicated to the Latest Famennian flora of Euramerica🌿 in the Swedish Museum of Natural history and at Agora Paleobotanica in Paris. At Agora, I was awarded the Boureau Prize for the best oral presentation. 😄🏆 #Paleobotany #Devonian

Fossil swamp-forest plants at Brymbo, Wrexham - where 300 million years ago giant lycopods (clubmosses) like Lepidodendron towered to over 120ft tall with massive horsetails like Calamites! Amazing to be able to see these at Stori Brymbo.

Thin section in the branching stem of a fossil lycopsid showing the tissues. A photo of the surface of the specimen showing the branching is in the corner

Today's fossil is a very tiny branching stem with preserved tissues - check the scale bar! 🌿⛏️🔬 It belonged to a lycopsid (= a clubmoss) that grew in what is now southern France during the early Carboniferous, about 350 million years ago #paleobotany #FossilFriday
Ref: doi.org/10.1016/0034...

A fossil fern leaf on a rock

Happy #FossilFriday and #FernFriday ! This beautiful fossil leaf belongs to a #fern that was growing in what is now southern France during the late Carboniferous, about 300 million years ago 🌿⛏️
#paleobotany #fossil #botany

Fieldtrip day 1: today we visited not 1 but 2 sites with fossil plants 🌿⛏️🤩 Here's a nice Stigmaria, the rooting structure of a lycopsid tree from the latest Carboniferous, a little over 300 million year ago. (and yes it is extremely warm 🌡️)

Finally plants for #3DThursday!🌽 A maize root tip, imaged using #microCT, from the Topp Roots Lab.

🔬: @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social Versa 520 XRM
🥼: Keith Duncan @cygnusplantxray.bsky.social
🏛️: Danforth Center @danforthcenter.bsky.social
📝: academic.oup.com/plphys/artic...
🎬: syGlass.io #syGlass

Section in a fossil stem with preserved tissues. The stem is only about 2mm in diameter. The outer part of the stem forms 8 lobes, the vascular tissues in the center form a triangle

This one is a section in a Sphenophyllum stem with 3d preserved tissues. It's from the same area (Hérault department) but early Carboniferous in age so about 50 million years older 🌿⛏️
Open access reference: doi.org/10.5252/geod...
2/3 #paleobotany

Attention, la deadline approche ! #paleobotany #paleontology #geosciences 🌲🍄🐝🐟🦖⛏️

Et les plantes colonisèrent la terre ferme… Il y a un demi-milliard d’années, les plantes, encore aquatiques, partaient à la conquête des continents. Une transition qui a métamorphosé la Terre et son atmosphère, ouvrant la voie aux vertébrés te...

Pour les francophones un petit article sur la terrestrialisation des plantes pour ce #FossilFriday 🌿⛏️ lejournal.cnrs.fr/articles/pla... #paleobotany #fossil

Some prints of extinct plants on black backdrops

More prints of plants on black backdrops, ontop of a printer which has just printed one out.

Trans anchiornis badges in little plastic bags

A collection of pride dinosaur and Ginkgo leaf stickers in blastic baggies

Prep for Lyme Regis Fossil Festival is almost finished!!!
All I have left are a few prints to print, stickers to cut, and a workshop intro spiel to fine-tune! Hope to see y'all there next weekend!!!
#paleobotany #paleontology #paleoart #fossilfestival #stickers #merch #dinosaurs #plants

#Botany Enjoy some lovely ferns lato sensu and lycophytes found within the lovely spruce forest of Tyresta national park (Sweden).

Shameless self-promotion continues...🙃 You might find this #fern book in your local bookstores! mailchi.mp/btiscience/f...

Heading out to a park this #FossilFriday?

Be sure to visit Horton Park in Bradford, where you can see one of three huge fossil trees!

These Carboniferous giants were excavated from Clayton in the late 19th Century and placed on public display to "inspire future generations of geologists".

Pieces of rock with fossil fern foliage

For this #FossilFriday a question for paleobotanists and people interested in #paleobotany 🌿⛏️: what are the groups of fossil plants and/or the big events in plant evolution that you would like to read a new review paper about?
#botany #fossil #plant #evolution

Someone's hand holding a piece of rock with fossil fern foliage on it in front of a living fern

Happy #FossilFriday and #FernFriday 🌿⛏️
The fossil is a piece of Pecopteris foliage (Marattiales) from the late Carboniferous of France, a little over 300 million year old. Extant fern: Dryopteris filix-mas (Polypodiales).
#paleobotany #fossil #botany

Our paper is now published🌲⛏️🇦🇶
#paleobotany #fossil #botany

Aujourd’hui, c’est la journée de la Terre

Celle qui nous nourrit et nous fournit tant de choses que l’on ne soupçonne parfois même pas.

Comme les métaux de nos téléphones, l’argile dans les cosmétiques, le gypse pour le plâtre, le verre, le zinc… Ou l’eau tout simplement !

Fossil spores seen under the microscope

Don't sneeze! These are spores of a 360 million year old lycopsid 🌿⛏️🔬
Today lycopsids (clubmosses) are small plants & relatively rare but in the Paleozoic some species formed large trees. The spores here have been fossilized still attached in groups of 4 (tetrads)
Happy #FossilFriday! #paleobotany

Subtropical forest with conifers in the foreground

The ultimate Jurassic Core

If you are a paleobotanist or botanist interested in doing a postdoc on fossil plants with me in Montpellier, I'm happy to help prepare a proposal for this year's #MSCA Postdoc Fellowship call (deadline Sept. 10).
marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/post...
1/3 #paleobotany #botany

Fosdil branch of a conifer from the Wengen Formation, Prags/Braies, middle Triassic, 238 million years ago

Fossil trunk of a conifer in porphyry tuff from Sinichbach/Rio Sinigo (Permian)

I'm at the Museo di Scienze Naturali dell'Alto Adige/Naturmuseum Südtirol for a few days to look at some cool fossil plants 🌿⛏️ And practice my (equally) catastrophic German & Italian *at the same time* 🙊 #paleobotany
(photos from the public exhibit)

Literally every extinct plant ever. Unless it's the Carboniferous, plants are basically never restored in popular palaeo media; instead, we just get modern ginkgoes, tree ferns, monkey puzzles, cycads and horsetails. Attempts to restore specific appropriate extinct taxa are never made. #paleobotany

Outside view of the synchrotron building

Small pieces of fossil plants embedded in epoxy and mounted on plots for analysis

Happy early #FossilFriday from synchrotron Soleil ☀️ After some successful tests yesterday, we are going to spend the next 72 hours sending very strong X-rays at very old fossil plants to see very small details of their very cool insides 🤓🌿⛏️ #paleobotany

Fossil trunk of a Bennettitale next to a print out of a reconstruction of the whole plant. It looks a bit like the trunk of a cycad.

For #FossilFriday, a trunk of Bennettitale from the Cretaceous of the UK. Bennettitales are an extinct group of plants that was common in the Mesozoic and looked a bit like cycads 🌴⛏️ You can also play with a low resolution 3D model of this fossil here: sketchfab.com/3d-models/be...
#paleobotany

Piece of Permian fossil wood in the field with a chocolate bar for scale

Impression of a fossil trunk in the field, with two small stuffed animals (owl and koala) for scale

My favorite scale bars!
🍫Glossopteris wood, Permian, Antarctica 2012
🐨🦉Leptophloeum, Devonian, Australia 2018
Happy #paleobotany #FossilFriday 🌿⛏️