Cuticle analysis

They are made of cutin, a resilient substance that can preserve the shapes of underlying cells, a quality that aids in the identification of plants that are otherwise no longer visible in the archaeological record.

Plant cuticles have also been incorporated into other areas of archaeobotanical research based on their susceptibility to environmental factors such as pCO2 levels and stresses such as water deficit and sodium chloride exposure.

In 2003, for example, cuticle analysis was used in a multi-proxy study to reconstruct changes in vegetation during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene in Kenya, with particular regard to the proportion of plants following the C4 photosynthetic pathway, and more specifically the NADP-ME C4 sub-pathway.

[14] There are, however, a number of other ways that such data can be used, including the following: The relationship between past CO2 levels and fossil cuticles has, particularly in the last few decades, become an important source of information on historic atmospheric change.

[21][22] The cuticles thus preserved can in turn be used in research regarding the nature of plants in a region as well as the biomes to which they belong in relation to the broader environmental factors by which they are influenced.

[28] Geochemical fingerprinting is a technique that can incorporate data from both fossil and extant cuticles to better understand paleoenvironmental conditions and changes in relation to individual plant species.

[29] Defined by Jochen Hoefs as "a chemical signal that provides information about the origin, the formation and/or the environment of a geological sample", a geochemical fingerprint is a type of identification marker most remarkable because it will not typically change with time or age.

A comparative study of both modern and ancient Ginkgo cuticles, for example, revealed a number of distinct, consistent diagenetic changes that altered the features of the samples over time.