Ancient pollen reveals how grasslands changed after the last ice age
Researchers used super-resolution microscopy and machine learning to analyze ancient pollen grains, revealing new insights into the evolution of grasslands over the last 25,000 years. This method overcomes the limitations of traditional light microscopy, which often fails to distinguish between similar-looking grass species.
Why it matters
This technological advancement allows scientists to reconstruct historical ecosystems with unprecedented accuracy, providing a better understanding of how climate change impacts plant life.
AI helped researchers find hidden differences in grass pollen and reconstruct 25,000 years of grassland change on Mt. Kenya.
Grasslands cover about 40% of Earth’s land, but their history is hard to trace.
Grass pollen is common in old sediments, yet grains from different species usually look almost identical under a normal light microscope.
“Open grasslands are a relatively recent ecosystem in Earth history, with open-habitat grasses present in the Eocene, about 40 million years ago,” the researchers wrote in their report.
“Grasses were potentially the first plants domesticated about 12,000 years ago and today include several of the world’s most important staple foods, such as wheat, rice, maize, barley, sorghum and millet.”
Surangi Punyasena, Professor of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , led the work with Marc-Élie Adaimé.
Adaimé is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Institution ’s Office of Digital and Innovation.
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