Evidence is weak for tropical rainforest 65 million years ago in
Africa’s low-latitudes The landscape of Central Africa 65
million years ago was a low-elevation tropical belt, but the
jury is still out on whether the region’s mammals browsed and
hunted beneath the canopy of a lush rainforest. The scientific
evidence for a tropical rainforest at that time is weak and far
from convincing, says paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs, Southern
Methodist University in Dallas. Fossil pollen from Central and
West Africa provide no definitive evidence for communities of
rainforest trees at the beginning of the Cenozoic, says Jacobs,
an expert in the paleobotany of Africa soon after dinosaurs had
gone extinct. It was the start of the age of mammals, and Africa
was largely an island continent. Many Cenozoic mysteries remain
to be solved The rainforest mystery is characteristic of the
scientific uncertainty and unknowns surrounding Africa’s ancient
flora during the period called the Cenozoic. There are large
gaps in the fossil