RE: No Mesozoic rainforests?

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

Quoting evelyn sobielski <koreke77@yahoo.de>:


> Two issues: While the existence of an equatorial
> rainbelt is as good as given, it is less clear whether
> there was a vegetation that would be considered
> "rainforest" - indeed there is no major gymnosperm
> component in present-day equatorial rainforest. But I
> don't know whether it was displaced or whether
> gymnosperms have always been outcompeted by something
> else under such conditions (E.g. _Metasequoia_ seems
> to have been prominent in *temperate* rainforest)*.

...as indeed _Tsuga_, _Picea_, _Pseudotsuga_, and _Thuja_ are prominent 
in some contemporary temperate rain forests.

--
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Nicholas J. Pharris
Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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Germany                 e-mail:   nicholas_pharris@eva.mpg.de
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"Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity."
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