Antarctic flora

, that included southern South America, New Zealand, and some southern island groups. Good identified Australia as its own floristic kingdom, and included New Guinea and New Caledonia in the Paleotropical floristic kingdom, because of the influx of tropical Eurasian flora that had mostly supplanted the Antarctic flora.

South America, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica were all part of the supercontinent Gondwana, which started to break up in the early Cretaceous period (135-65 million years ago). India was the first to break away, followed by Africa, and then New Zealand, which started to drift north. By the end of the Cretaceous, South America and Australia were still joined to Antarctica. Paleontologist Gilbert Brenner identified the emergence of a distinct southern Gondwanan flora by the late Cretaceous period in the cooler and humid southern hemisphere regions of Australia, southern South America, southern Africa, Antarctica, and New Zealand; it best resembled the flora of modern-day southern New Zealand. A drier northern Gondwanan flora had developed in northern South America and northern Africa.

s arrived in Australia 50-60,000 years ago, and used fire to reshape the vegetation of the continent; as a result, the Antarctic flora (also known as the Rainforest flora in Australia) retreated to a few isolated areas composing less than 2% of Australia's land area.

The woody plants of the Antarctic flora include conifers in the families Podocarpaceae, Araucariaceae and the subfamily Callitroideae of Cupressaceae, and angiosperms such as the families Proteaceae, Griseliniaceae, Cunoniaceae, Atherospermataceae, and Winteraceae, and genera like southern beech ("Nothofagus") and fuchsia ("Fuchsia"). Many other families of flowering plants and ferns, including the tree fern "Dicksonia", are characteristic of the Antarctic flora.

The continent of Antarctica itself has been too cold and dry to support virtually any vascular plants for millions of years, and its flora presently consists of around 250 lichens, 100 mosses, 25-30 liverworts, around 700 terrestrial and aquatic algal species. Two flowering plants, "Deschampsia antarctica" (Antarctic hair grass) and "Colobanthus quitensis" (Antarctic pearlwort), are found on the northern and western parts of the Antarctic Peninsula. Species of moss endemic to Antarctica include "Grimmia antarctici", "Schistidium antarctici", and "Sarconeurum glaciale" .

References

* Cox, C. Barry, Peter D. Moore (1985). "Biogeography: An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach (4th ed.)". Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford.

ee also

*Antarctic Floristic Kingdom