Although most conifers are known for their narrow, needle-like or scale-like leaves, some species had broad, strap-shaped leaves more reminiscent of flowering plants. This form may have been an adaptation to humid, subtropical, or tropical climates, where these broad-leaved conifers typically thrived. Podozamites is a fossil form genus used for these broad, strap-shaped conifer leaves with multiple parallel veins. These leaves actually came from several different types of Mesozoic conifers. Some species, especially in the Late Triassic and Jurassic of Asia, belonged to deciduous conifers that dropped entire shoots seasonally. These have often been found alongside reproductive structures such as Krassilovia and Swedenborgia, and may have belonged to an extinct conifer family. Other Podozamites-type leaves from the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous more closely resemble modern Agathis and Nageia. These forms may represent early relatives of today’s broad-leaved rainforest conifers, which still grow in Australasia and Southeast Asia. Podozamites first appeared in the Late Permian and persisted until the end of the Cretaceous, with fossils found across much of the world. During the Late Triassic through Early Cretaceous, it was a dominant tree in warm, wet environments, forming vast deciduous forests. By the mid-Cretaceous, its range had begun to retract toward the poles, and like many other Mesozoic plants, it eventually vanished, possibly displaced by the global rise of flowering plants. Specimens assigned to Agathis first appear in the mid-Cretaceous of Australia, though "Podozamites (=Agathis) jurassica" has also been described as an earlier example, but it likely represents an ancestral agathoid araucarian instead.