Presenter: Dr Vera Korasidis
Facilitator: Linda Condon
The slides from the presentation are here. The video of the presentation is here.
Report by Richard Gough on the Saturday Seminar of 16 August 2025
presented by Dr Vera Koresidis, University of Melbourne
Dr Koresidis’s talk focused on the ability of plants to adapt to six degrees of global warming in the Paleogene period about sixty million years ago. The warming took five thousand years to occur and lasted about a hundred thousand years. The warming arose from the growth in carbon dioxide and methane gases in the atmosphere due to extensive volcanic activity. During the preceding Cretaceous period the earth had been both very damp and warm. This had resulted in different regions of earth having climates quite different from today, e.g. the poles had a tropical climate.
The evidence about plant life was drawn from the very deep layered coal deposits in the Latrobe valley in Gippsland. The coal was formed from wetlands, which were rich in their variety of plants. Analysis of plant pollen in the coal revealed their adaptation to changes in the climate. This fieldwork was complemented by research on dry cliff faces in Bighorn in Wyoming, US.
The implications are for this research for current concerns with climate change is to show that plant ecosystems can adapt, especially by moving to differing climates, which are more supportive. However, global warming today is occurring at a rate ten times faster than the Paleogene period sixty million years ago. Dr Korasidis argued that helping plant ecosystems adapt to faster change in temperature is important, current efforts to reduce climate change are critical. The creation of seed banks is also very important to enable the introduction of extinct plants.