The Caraça mountain region, in upstate Minas Gerais, a cool climate area predominantly covered in woodlands, could have been rainy and hot, with an average annual temperature of 28 degrees Celsius. That is, 30 million years ago, according to the biologist Jean Carlo Mari Fanton. He conducted microscopic examinations of 64 specimens of fossil leaves of 25 species of flowering plants (angiosperms) found in the Gandarela and Fonseca basins. Preserved details, such as glands, hairs and the shape and other characteristics of the leaves, allowed him to determine the kinship of these plants to modern species, and provided knowledge of the environment in which they lived. They were principally trees of the Myrtaceae family, today represented by guava and jabuticaba trees, and leguminous trees such as Brazil wood. These features make the paleoforest of Minas Gerais a forerunner of the Atlantic Forest. Large, very sharp-tipped wide leaves, facilitating water drainage, indicate that they lived in an environment with plentiful rainfall. These findings are part of the doctoral dissertation completed this year by Fanton in the laboratory of Fresia Torres Branco at the University of Campinas (Unicamp). (Jornal da Unicamp)
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