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Biomolecules preserved in ca. 168 million year old fossil conifer wood

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Abstract

Biomarkers are widely known to occur in the fossil record, but the unaltered biomolecules are rarely reported from sediments older than Paleogene. Polar terpenoids, the natural products most resistant to degradation processes, were reported mainly from the Tertiary conifers, and the oldest known are Cretaceous in age. In this paper, we report the occurrence of relatively high concentrations of ferruginol derivatives and other polar diterpenoids, as well as their diagenetic products, in a conifer wood Protopodocarpoxylon from the Middle Jurassic of Poland. Thus, the natural product terpenoids reported in this paper are definitely the oldest polar biomolecules detected in geological samples. The extracted phenolic abietanes like ferruginol and its derivatives (6,7-dehydroferruginol, sugiol, 11,14-dioxopisiferic acid) are produced only by distinct conifer families (Cupressaceae s. l., Podocarpaceae and Araucariaceae), to which Protopodocarpoxylon could belong based on anatomical characteristics. Therefore, the natural product terpenoids are of great advantage in systematics of fossil plant remains older than Paleogene and lacking suitable anatomical preservation.

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Acknowledgment

This research has been financed in part by the University of Silesia grants BW33/2003, BW34/2004, and BW19/2005. Warm thanks are due to Dr. Slawomir Kurkiewicz (Medical University of Silesia) for technical assistance. M.Z. thanks the Foundation for Polish Science (Grants for Young Scientist’ 2006) for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Earth Sciences, University of Silesia, Będzińska Street 60, 41-200, Sosnowiec, Poland

    Leszek Marynowski & Michał Zatoń

  2. Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Sektion Paläobotanik, Senckenberganlage 25, 60325, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

    Angelika Otto

  3. Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and UMR 5125 du CNRS, 7 rue Dubois, 69622, Villeurbanne cedex, France

    Marc Philippe

  4. College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, 97331, USA

    Bernd R. T. Simoneit

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  1. Leszek Marynowski
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  2. Angelika Otto
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  3. Michał Zatoń
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  4. Marc Philippe
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  5. Bernd R. T. Simoneit
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Correspondence to Leszek Marynowski.

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Marynowski, L., Otto, A., Zatoń, M. et al. Biomolecules preserved in ca. 168 million year old fossil conifer wood. Naturwissenschaften 94, 228–236 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-006-0179-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-006-0179-x

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