A landmass that broke away from north-western Australia about 150 million years ago and drifted north for the next 100 million years helped lay the foundations for Southeast Asia\u2019s extraordinarily diverse tropical forests, new research has revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An international study of more than 3000 fossil specimens preserved in amber in Myanmar has uncovered a diverse plant community dating back about 99 million years, providing a remarkable window into the ancient flora carried north by the West Burma Block<\/a> before it collided with Southeast Asia about 50 million years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Curtin University co-author Professor Byron Lamont said the findings revealed a remarkable connection between Australia\u2019s geological past and the origins of one of the world\u2019s richest tropical plant regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s an amazing story of a landmass breaking away from north-western Australia, drifting north across the ancient oceans for millions of years and eventually becoming part of Southeast Asia,\u201d Professor Lamont said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAlong the way, it carried a rich tropical flora that evolved in relative isolation near the Equator for tens of millions of years. When the landmass eventually joined Southeast Asia, it helped provide the foundations for the extraordinary plant diversity the region is renowned for today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe identified at least 392 morphological types of flowering plants in the amber, alongside an array of ferns, conifers and other ancient plant groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese fossils give us a rare glimpse of that ancient world and help explain the deep evolutionary roots of Southeast Asia\u2019s tropical forests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Lamont said the diversity is among the highest recorded for a single fossil plant assemblage from the early to mid-Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPreserved in exceptional three-dimensional detail, the fossils include flowers, fruits, leaves and seeds that offer evidence of a flourishing tropical plant community 100 million years ago,\u201d Professor Lamont said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBecause the West Burma Block drifted north while remaining close to the Equator for tens of millions of years, this prolonged tropical environment provided a refuge in which ancient plant lineages could survive and diversify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe findings challenge the long-held view that Southeast Asia\u2019s diverse flowering-plant ecosystems largely originated much more recently, showing that flowering plants had already diversified extensively in equatorial environments during the Cretaceous period.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The research is titled \u2018A mid-Cretaceous island as a cradle of Southeast Asian plant biodiversity<\/em>\u2019, and is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution<\/em>: <\/a>DOI : 10.1038\/s41559-026-03219-7<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A landmass that broke away from north-western Australia about 150 million years ago and drifted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4307,"featured_media":32663,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":277,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[277],"tags":[211,226],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-32662","media-release","type-media-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-and-environment","tag-research","tag-science"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"","qualification":"","link":"","description":"","faculty":""}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":[24386,30634]},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}},"experts":false},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/FOR-WEB-1000x500.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Lucien","last_name":"Wilkinson","display_name":"Lucien Wilkinson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/32662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/32662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32662"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=32662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}