This "small grass fossil" hides the secrets of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, May 25th.

Xinhua News Agency reporters Gemdale and Dong Ruifeng

How high was the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau 24 million years ago? What is its ecological environment?

Recently, China Kexue Yuan Institute of Botany Yufei Wang and team of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology team Deng Tao, Liu Xiaodong Institute of Earth Environment team, with a "long grass fossils", opened a central Tibet 2400 million years The secret of "growth taller".

During the interview, researcher Wang Yufei told reporters that this “treasure” fossil has an inexplicable “mystery of life experience”.

In 2009, Zhong Keyuan ancient spine by Deng Tao scientific expedition team in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, at the time of collection of animal fossils, often accompanied by plant fossils.

Among the many fossils, a fossil collected from the Lunpola Basin in the central part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (in the area of ​​Nagqu City, Tibet), with a clearly-veined fan-shaped outline imprint, caught Wang Yufei's attention.

Is it a "worm" or a "leaf"? The long pursuit and exploration for more than ten years has begun.

Elimination and falsification is the first step of the work.

After that, Yufei Wang find ferns taxonomists, Zhong Keyuan plant researcher Zhang Xianchun, Zhang Xianchun recognize this is what Apple is a fossil plant.

In Zhong Keyuan Institute of Botany, Chinese ancient pavilion plant, the reporter saw a piece of apple is a fossil of "real content": the gray fossils of half a palm-sized, about the size of a fingernail and a fan-shaped marks clearly visible.

"This trace is one of the four leaves of the genus Pingi, and you can see its unique veins.

According to Wang Yufei, 24 million years ago, the Lunpola Basin was still an ancient lake.

How can a "little grass" achieve the "height" of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau?

In fact, as early as the 1970s, academician Xu Ren, a well-known botanist and paleobotanist in China, conducted a comparative study of an alpine oak fossil in the Xishapangma Peak region, and proposed that the area has been in the past several million years.

"Because of precedent, to find out what this fossil, we immediately thought of it can be used to measure the altitude.

Compared with other plant fossils, Ping genus fossils have unique advantages.

By consulting data and analyzing the pollen combination data of the same layer of fossils, the research team determined the upper and lower limits of the ancient lake's altitude step by step, and finally unlocked the secret of the "height" in the middle of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

"This research can be described as'a sword of ten years'.