About

Peter Crane is a Senior Research Scientist at Yale School of the Environment. His work focuses on the diversity of plant life, including its origin and fossil history, current status, conservation, and use. He served as the Carl W. Knobloch Jr. Dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (now Yale School of the Environment) from 2009 until 2016. Prior to his tenure at Yale, he was the director of the Field Museum in Chicago from 1992 to 1999, where he established the Office of Environmental and Conservation Programs and the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change. From 1999 to 2006, he was the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he strengthened and expanded the gardens’ scientific, conservation, and public programs. Dean Crane has been elected to several prestigious scientific societies, including the Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the German Academy Leopoldina. He was knighted in the U.K. for services to horticulture and conservation in 2004. Currently, he serves on the boards of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation. He holds a B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Reading, U.K.

Research topics

• Biology
• Botany
• Paleontology
• Geology
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Synchrotron radiation X-ray tomographic microscopy datasets for seed structure in Cycadeoidea morierei

  PSI · 2026-01-01

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  The extinct plant group Bennettitales (Cycadeoidales) was a prominent part of Mesozoic vegetation. The group has been studied extensively and for more than 100 years it has been central in discussions of the relationships among the major groups of seed plants in which extinct plants were also considered. Despite much effort the phylogenetic position of the Bennettitales is still unresolved with a major obstacle being uncertainty about how to interpret the organisation and structure of the seed. The most widely accepted interpretation has been that the seed, like the seeds of most conifers, has a single integument around the nucellus and lacks any additional coverings. An alternative interpretation is that the seed integument is surrounded by an envelope comparable to the situation in extant Gnetales and extinct Erdtmanithecales. The petrified seed cone of Cycadeoidea (Bennettites) morierei described in the late nineteenth century from the Early Cretaceous of Normandy is one of the most informative bennettitalean reproductive structures with its superb preservation offering great potential for resolving the unsettled discussion regarding seed structure in Bennettitales. C. morierei was carefully documented by Octave Lignier in his monumental study “Végétaux fossiles de Normandie. Structure et affinités du Bennettites morierei Sap. & Mar. (sp.)” from 1894, but despite his meticulous analysis of the fossil, Lignier left certain questions open in his interpretation and in his widely cited reconstruction of the structure of the seed. In the paper associated with the datasets provided here we have re-examined fragments of Cycadeoidea morierei using synchrotron X-ray tomographic microscopy (SRXTM) to attempt to answer some of these open questions. Cycadeoidea morierei is based on a single petrified seed cone. The specimen was fractured by Lignier, who prepared several thin sections, in longitudinal as well as transverse directions in preparing his account. The original material was stored at the University of Caen, France, but most was lost during the second World War. However, several larger and smaller fragments of the seed cone were later recovered at the university and made available for the present study. Among the fragments studied using SRXTM were small isolated, abraded seeds and interseminal scales (e.g., fragments 6 and 8) and a few small groups of fractured seeds and interseminal scales still tightly packed together (e.g., fragment 17). Typically, these small fragments are broken at the base and only rarely are remains of the seed stalk preserved. One larger fragment (fragment 24) consists of several seeds with seed stalks intact. For comparison with Cycadeoidea morierei we also examined a fragment of another classic petrified seed cone, Cycadeoidea gibsoniana from the Early Cretaceous of isle of Wight, Southern England, using SRXTM. The results, combined with a comparative survey of other fossil material, indicate that the seeds of Bennettitales had at least one, perhaps two, envelopes covering the integument, comparable to what is seen among extant Gnetales, extinct Erdtmanithecales, and diverse fossil seeds recovered from Early Cretaceous mesofossil assemblages. Most of the SRXTM analyses of the Cycadeoidea material were carried during 2009-2023 on the TOMCAT beamline, SLS, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland. Fragment 24 was analysed at the new I-TOMCAT beamline at SLS in November 2025.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>Dacrycarpoides</i>, a new genus of extinct Podocarpaceae (Coniferales) from the early Miocene of New Caledonia

  American Journal of Botany · 2025-05-01

  article

  PREMISE: The archipelago of New Caledonia contains one of the world's most distinctive biotas. The presence of notable paleoendemics in this biota suggests that Gondwanan vicariance may have played an important role in its formation, but geological evidence indicates that New Caledonia was submerged until the Oligocene and that its flora formed from more recent long-distance dispersal events. The lack of a fossil record contributes to uncertainties inherent in both interpretations, but newly discovered fossil plant assemblages may help clarify the origins of the New Caledonian flora. METHODS: We used standard paleobotanical techniques to prepare and describe leafy conifer shoots from an early Miocene deposit (age ~19 Ma) on the Pindaï Peninsula of western New Caledonia. To determine affinities of the fossil material, we compared it to herbarium collections of extant New Caledonian conifers and the broader macrofossil record. RESULTS: Fossil leaves contain cellular-level details of leaf morphology and epidermis anatomy consistent with the conifer family Podocarpaceae, in particular the extant genus Dacrycarpus. However, stomata in the fossils are arranged in crowded complexes unlike those of any described Podocarpaceae taxon, and therefore we assign this material to a new extinct genus: Dacrycarpoides. CONCLUSIONS: New Caledonia is a hotspot of modern conifer biodiversity and was home to now extinct lineages as well. The presence of extinct conifers on Miocene New Caledonia is consistent with floras from neighboring landmasses and highlights the role of extinction in shaping the modern flora of New Caledonia and other Australasian landmasses.

  PublisherDOI

• A new woody stem of <i>Piceoxylon</i> from the Early Cretaceous of Northeast China and its implications for the early diversification of Pinaceae

  Journal of Systematics and Evolution · 2025-07-27 · 2 citations

  article

  Abstract Pinaceae are one of the most economically and ecologically important tree families and play a key role in boreal, temperate, and montane forests of the Northern Hemisphere. The family have a rich fossil record with the earliest occurrence of the Pinaceae crown group probably from the Late Jurassic, and diverse seed cones, woods, leaves, and pollen grains from the Early Cretaceous of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the origin and early evolutionary history of Pinaceae is not well understood, in part because of uncertainty about the phylogenetic position of early fossils. In this article we describe a new woody stem of Pinaceae based on well‐preserved material from the Early Cretaceous Huolinhe Formation in Jarud Banner, eastern Inner Mongolia, Northeast China. Piceoxylon jarudense sp. nov. has distinct growth rings with secondary xylem composed of tracheids, ray tracheids, ray parenchyma cells, axial parenchyma cells, and axial and radial resin canals. Pitting on radial walls of tracheids is abietinean; cross‐field pitting is piceoid and taxodioid with two to six pits arranged in one to two rows per cross‐field. Axial and radial resin canals are lined by thick‐walled epithelial cells. Piceoxylon has been considered to include species with wood anatomy comparable to extant Larix , Pseudotsuga , Picea , and Cathaya . Comparisons of wood anatomy and constrained phylogenetic analyses of P. jarudense , one of the earliest records of Piceoxylon , both suggest that P. jarudense is most likely allied with Larix and Pseudotsuga within the pinoid clade suggesting divergence of the Larix – Pseudotsuga clade before ~125.6 Ma.

  PublisherDOI

• Sphenophyllales from the Mazon Creek flora (Upper Moscovian: Illinois, USA)

  Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society · 2025-05-09 · 1 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT Sphenophyllales is an extinct clade related to horsetails whose members were important ground-cover and understory components of the vast tropical Carboniferous peat swamps of Euramerica. These plants exhibited extreme anisophylly and heterophylly, complicating the development of whole-plant concepts within the group. Here, we describe a new species of a small sphenophyll cone—Hexaphyllostrobus negauneeana sp. nov.—using computed tomography of three remarkably well-preserved cones from the Pennsylvanian Mazon Creek flora of Illinois, USA. We also briefly review the broader diversity of sphenophylls present in the Mazon Creek flora as a step towards developing new whole-plant concepts within Sphenophyllales.

  PublisherDOI

• Birbal Sahni Introduces the Pentoxyleae

  International Journal of Plant Sciences · 2025-07-07

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  paleobotanical papers.Some have been descriptions of new plant fossils that have expanded our view of the natural world and added bricks into the wall of knowledge of plants of the past.Others have been landmark contributions that have stimulated new ideas and raised new questions.A paper by Professor Birbal Sahni FRS, one of the great paleobotanical figures of the mid-twentieth century, was of this second kind.Sahni (1948) introduced an entirely new group of extinct plants, the Pentoxyleae (commonly referred to as Pentoxylales), which have been featured in textbooks and surveys of fossil and living seed plants ever since.Sahni's presentation of the Pentoxylales was a masterful synthesis.However, as Sahni himself noted (Sahni 1948 p. 79), determining how Pentoxylales are related to other seed plants is a puzzle, and it is still not resolved.Birbal Sahni was a major figure in the development of science in India.As his

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cupule-bearing cones of Jarudia (Doyleales) and associated leaves from the Early Cretaceous of the New Siberian Islands, Arctic Russia

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Cupule-bearing cones of Jarudia (Doyleales) and associated leaves from the Early Cretaceous of the New Siberian Islands, Arctic Russia

  Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology · 2025-09-21 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  A new species of cupule-bearing seed cone assigned to Jarudia (Doyleales) is described from the Lower Cretaceous (Aptian–Albian) Balyktakh Formation of Kotelnyi Island in the New Siberian Islands. The new species, Jarudia borealis sp. nov. is an elongated, cylindrical seed cone consisting of a main axis with helically arranged, densely spaced bract-cupule axis complexes, each of which terminates in a single incurved cupule. Cupule-bearing stalks are thin proximally where they are fused with a narrow, elongated bract. Above, they are free from the bract, gradually widen toward the tip and are curved adaxially relative to the main axis. Each cupule is formed by the wide flattened distal part of the cupule stalk, one median and two lateral flaps, and is quadrangular in transverse section. The flattened cupule stalk and three flaps are fused at the apex of the cupule but are free toward the base. Micro-CT scans reveal that most cupules are empty, but maceration of remaining carbonaceous material produced pieces of the cupule cuticle, as well as fragments of the nucellar cuticle and megaspore membrane. Stomata, occasionally present in the outer epidermis of the cupules, are haplocheilic, with 5–8 subsidiary cells. The megaspore membrane is two layered comprising a foot layer and branched, interconnected bacula. The cupule-bearing cones of Jarudia borealis sp. nov. occur closely associated with numerous remains of linear leaves described as Phoenicopsis arcticus sp. nov., as well as rare leaf fragments of Pityophyllum sp. and Ginkgoites sp. • Seed cones of Jarudia are recorded from the New Siberian Islands for the first time. • A new species of Jarudia is described from the Lower Cretaceous of Kotelniy Island. • A new species of Phoenicopsis associated with Jarudia is described. • A comparison with other representatives of the Doyleales is conducted. • Attribution of the seed cones and associated leaves to the same plant is discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• A new Harrisiothecium pollen organ from the Upper Triassic of South Central China

  Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology · 2024-02-13

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Cretaceous chloranthoids: early prominence, extinct diversity and missing links

  Annals of Botany · 2024-02-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: The Chloranthaceae comprise four extant genera (Hedyosmum, Ascarina, Chloranthus and Sarcandra), all with simple flowers. Molecular phylogenetics indicates that the Chloranthaceae diverged very early in angiosperm evolution, although how they are related to eudicots, magnoliids, monocots and Ceratophyllum is uncertain. Fossil pollen similar to that of Ascarina and Hedyosmum has long been recognized in the Early Cretaceous, but over the last four decades evidence of extinct Chloranthaceae based on other types of fossils has expanded dramatically and contributes significantly to understanding the evolution of the family. SCOPE: Studies of fossils from the Cretaceous, especially mesofossils of Early Cretaceous age from Portugal and eastern North America, recognized diverse flowers, fruits, seeds, staminate inflorescences and stamens of extinct chloranthoids. These early chloranthoids include forms related to extant Hedyosmum and also to the Ascarina, Chloranthus and Sarcandra clade. In the Late Cretaceous there are several occurrences of distinctive fossil androecia related to extant Chloranthus. The rich and still expanding Cretaceous record of Chloranthaceae contrasts with a very sparse Cenozoic record, emphasizing that the four extant genera are likely to be relictual, although speciation within the genera might have occurred in relatively recent times. In this study, we describe three new genera of Early Cretaceous chloranthoids and summarize current knowledge on the extinct diversity of the group. CONCLUSIONS: The evolutionary lineage that includes extant Chloranthaceae is diverse and abundantly represented in Early Cretaceous mesofossil floras that provide some of the earliest evidence of angiosperm reproductive structures. Extinct chloranthoids, some of which are clearly in the Chloranthaceae crown group, fill some of the morphological gaps that currently separate the extant genera, help to illuminate how some of the unusual features of extant Chloranthaceae evolved and suggest that Chloranthaceae are of disproportionate importance for a more refined understanding of ecology and phylogeny of early angiosperm diversification.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Cretaceous diversification of angiosperms: perspectives from mesofossils

  Geological Society London Special Publications · 2024-02-02 · 13 citations

  article

  Abstract The plant fossil record during the Cretaceous documents a major transition in the dominant group of terrestrial autotrophs, as plant communities from the earlier Mesozoic were transformed by the appearance and rapid diversification of angiosperms. This transformation began in the Early Cretaceous, continued through the Late Cretaceous and led ultimately to the dominance of angiosperms in most terrestrial ecosystems today, which had profound consequences for the other organisms inhabiting terrestrial ecosystems and perhaps the planet as a whole. Our understanding of angiosperm diversification has been greatly improved over the past 50 years by integrated studies of fossil assemblages containing angiosperm pollen and leaves, but especially by new information from mesofossil floras that have provided previously unanticipated detail on floral form in Cretaceous angiosperms and have allowed the recognition of key dispersed pollen types in situ . Information from fossil flowers has greatly facilitated meaningful comparisons with living plants and integration with phylogenetic analyses of extant angiosperms based on DNA evidence. The combined insights from these discoveries provide a broadly consistent and coherent picture of angiosperm evolution through the Cretaceous, which comprises more than half of their entire evolutionary history.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Systematics, Floral Structure and Reproductive Biology of Mid-Cretaceous Magnoliid Angiosperms

  NSF · $211k · 1991–1994

• Floral Structure and Systematics of Mid-Cretaceous Angiosperms

  NSF · $110k · 1988–1991

• Support for Care and Use of the Systematic Collection of Mazon Creek Fossil Animals and Plants

  NSF · $153k · 1987–1990

• Early Fossil History and Evolution of the Betulaceae

  NSF · $83k · 1984–1987

Frequent coauthors

• Else Marie Friis

  Swedish Museum of Natural History

  250 shared

• Kaj Raunsgaard Pedersen

  Aarhus University

  225 shared

• Patrick S. Herendeen

  Chicago Botanic Garden

  155 shared

• Gongle Shi

  Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology

  81 shared

• Paul Kenrick

  Natural History Museum

  70 shared

• William A. DiMichele

  67 shared

• Nicholas Rowe

  Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement

  66 shared

• Fabiany Herrera

  Field Museum of Natural History

  65 shared

Education

• PhD, Department of Botany

  University of Reading

  1981

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
• Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• Member of the German Academy Leopoldina
• Knighted in the U.K. for services to horticulture and conser…