The spurge family, or Euphorbiaceae, includes economically valuable plants like the rubber tree, castor oil plant, poinsettia, and cassava. Driven by climatic changes and land movements over millennia, a group of spurges relocated thousands of miles from ancient South America to Australia, Asia, and parts of Africa.
Reported in the American Journal of Botany, the findings suggest that the spurge family’s Macaranga-Mallotus clade (MMC), encompassing a common ancestor and all its descendants and long considered to have Asian origins, may have first appeared in South America when it was still part of Gondwana—the supercontinent that encompassed South America, Antarctica, and Australia—before spreading around the globe.
“Our study provides the first direct fossil evidence of spurges in Gondwanan South America,” said Peter Wilf, professor of geosciences and lead author, noting that the finding contrasts with the prevailing idea that the MMC evolved in Asia.