Editorial

Abstract

Kear, Benjamin P., 11 November 2019. Editorial. Alcheringa 43, XX–XX. ISSN 0311-5518.

Benjamin P. Kear [[email protected]], Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University, 752 36 Uppsala, Sweden.

THIS ISSUE introduces the second contribution in the Nell Ludbrook Special Review series (Kear 2018) for Alcheringa. The article (McLoughlin & Prevec 2019) has been lead authored by Stephen McLoughlin, who served with distinction as Chief Editor for Alcheringa from 2006–2016, and continues to support the journal to this day as an Associate Editor and key member of the Editorial Group.

Stephen is currently Professor and Senior Curator at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, and is recognized internationally for his ground breaking work on Gondwanan Paleozoic and Mesozoic floras, and especially those from the Australasian region. Recently, Stephen and colleagues published a highly detailed investigation of the dramatic floral turnover across the Permian-Triassic boundary (251.9 million years ago), which is marked at southern palaeolatitudes by the extinction of Glossopteridales—iconic Gondwanan arborescent plants ubiquitous in Late Permian peat-forming forests (Vajda et al. 2020). Stephen is joined on his invited Nell Ludbrook Special Review by Rosemary Prevec of the Albany Museum in Makhanda, South Africa, who is another leading researcher on glossopterids. Their study provides a comprehensive reassessment of the ovuliferous reproductive organs (Fig. 1), which are crucial for glossopterid taxonomy, and reveal a complex cone-like structure that differs from those of subsequent seed-ferns that survived into the Mesozoic.

Fig. 1 The glossopterid fruiting structure, Scutum leslii Plumstead 1952 (sensu Prevec 2011), attached to the midrib of a leaf found in the Early Permian Vryheid Formation, near Vereeniging, in the northern Karoo Basin of South Africa. Image courtesy Stephen McLoughlin.