New paleobotanical extrapolation

[StephanPickering@cs.com]

Dietrich Schneider, Michael Wink, Frank Sporer, Philip Lounibos, 2002. Cycads: their evolution, toxins, herbivores, and insect pollinators. Naturwissenschaften on-line prior to print release. A most welcomed addition to the literature...their abstract says it all, the paper itself an intellectual stimulant of the highest order. Angiosperms receive the attention, the gymnosperms, like haunted trees in a cement parking lot, being background static, as it were. Now, Dietrich Schneider and his team set aside the flowers, and look intently at the plant lineages which, during the Triassic, were the meals for herbivores and insects...and, today, are still living.