A new project to investigate the Cretaceous Resin Event

A new project involving ICTA-UAB researcher Victor Sarto I Monteys will study the Cretaceous Resin Event under a new perspective. The project “Cretaceous Resin Event: Global bioevent of massive resin production at the initial diversification of modern forest ecosystems” recently received a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through its “National Program for Fostering Excellence in Scientific and Technical Research”. ICTA-UAB researcher Victor Sarto i Monteys will participate in this project, which is coordinated by Dr Xavier Delclòs from the University of Barcelona (UAB), as a senior entomologist analizing the insects trapped in this fosil amber, particularly moths (Lepidoptera) and book lices (Psocoptera).  

During the Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago, the most important event of massive resin production of the History of Earth took place, apparently occurring globally, continuously and spanning a few tens of millions of years. If confirmed, it will be possible to define a global paleoevent of massive resin production in order to know its nature and to promote a systematic and multidisciplinary research on Cretaceous amber under a new perspective. That will be the main aim of the present project.

This “Cretaceous Resin Event” is also significant because it occurred during a biotic revolution that brought substantial changes to the terrestrial ecosystems, namely the transition between the Mesophytic and Cenophytic periods and the origin of the modern terrestrial arthropod communities.

 It is well known that fossil resin or amber preserved insects and other small organisms in finer fidelity than perhaps any other kind of fossil. One of our main hypotheses is that a single conifer lineage massively produced the resin that originated the Cretaceous amber deposits during tens of millions of years.

Apart from the study of this biotic factor involved in the paleoevent, we aim to study other potential ones, such as insect damage, pathogenic fungi or bacteria, as well as potential abiotic factors such as the climate, volcanism, the atmospheric gas composition or fire damage.