The Annonaceae are a pantropical family, with ca. 130 genera and ca. 2500 species. Morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses place Annonaceae in the Magnoliales, with Eupomatiaceae as their sister group. Within Annonaceae the genus Anaxagorea is sister to the rest of the family. Anaxagorea, with 26 species, presents a unique pattern of geographic disjunction for the family, with four species in Asia and the rest in Central and South America. Most other genera are either paleotropical or neotropical, except for Xylopia, which is pantropical. Based on morphological phylogenetic analyses, it has been suggested that Annonaceae arose in the Early Cretaceous when taxa could disperse between Laurasia and Northern Gondwana, and split into a Laurasian line, represented today by Anaxagorea, and a Gondwanan line that gave rise to the rest of the family, while Asian taxa other than Anaxagorea represent later invasions of Laurasia from Africa. In the latest Cretaceous, seeds and pollen of Annonaceae are reported from Northern Gondwana (west Africa, Colombia), while seeds from the London Clay indicate the presence of Annonaceae in Laurasia by the Eocene. This biogeographic scenario can be tested phylogenetically by determining whether or not the South American species are nested among Asian and Central American species. For this purpose we have conducted a phylogenetic analysis of Anaxagorea and selected outgroups based on morphological characters and sequences of the chloroplast regions trnL-F and trnK. Preliminary morphological results support the monophyly of Asian taxa plus the Brazilian species A. silvatica, while trnL-F supports nesting of the other South American species within a Central American grade. This supports a Laurasian origin for most South American taxa, but it also indicates the biogeographic history of the family may be more complex, with two distinct origins of the present disjunction.

Key words: Anaxagorea, Annonaceae, biogeography, trnK, trnL-F