Antarctic flora

Antarctic flora are a distinct community of vascular plants which evolved millions of years ago on the supercontinent of Gondwana.

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 – 1911) was the first to notice similarities in the flora and speculated that Antarctica had served as either a source or a transitional point, and that land masses now separated might formerly have been adjacent.

Antarctica was also part of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, which gradually broke up by plate tectonics starting 110 million years ago.

South America, Madagascar, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica were all part of the supercontinent Gondwana, which started to break up in the early Cretaceous period (145–66 million years ago).

Africa and India drifted north into the tropical latitudes, became hotter and drier, and ultimately connected with the Eurasian continent.

Investigations of Upper Cretaceous and Early Tertiary sediments of Antarctica yield a rich assemblage of well-preserved fossil dicotyledonous angiosperm wood which provides evidence for the existence, since the Late Cretaceous, of temperate forests similar in composition to those found in present-day southern South America, New Zealand and Australia.

[4] A fossil water lily, Notonuphar (similar to Nuphar in the extant family Nympheaceae), was described from Eocene-aged sediments on Seymour Island in 2017.