<I>Ceratophyllum</I> (Ceratophyllaceae) from the Miocene of Eastern China and its Paleoecological Significance

Abstract

Vegetative shoots and a newly discovered fruit of Ceratophyllum are described from diatomite of the middle Miocene Shanwang Formation in Shandong Province, eastern China. Based on the fruit, the fossil can be referred to C. muricatum subsp. muricatum. The presence of this Ceratophyllum indicates that the climate was slightly warmer and more equable than today.

An Early Cretaceous fruit with affinities to Ceratophyllaceae

“…Fossils of various ages from the Cretaceous to the Holocene assigned to the genus Ceratophyllum have been reported around the world (see Les, 1988c, Table 8; Hu and Chaney, 1940; Backman, 1943; Hessland, 1946; Terasmae and Craig, 1958; Avakov, 1962; Dorofeev, 1963, 1974; Ritchie and DeVries, 1964; Watts and Bright, 1968; Gruger, 1973; Knobloch, 1977; Gregor, 1978; Mai and Walther, 19781988; Van Zant 1979; Griffin, 1980; Pals et al, 1980; Ohlhorst et al, 1982; Palamarev, 1982; van der Burgh, 1983, 1987; Axelrod, 1985; Pierce and Tiffney, 1986; Geissert et al, 1990; Herendeen et al, 1990; Ozaki, 1991; Huang and Dilcher, 1994; Dyjor et al, 1998; Mai and Wähnert, 2000; Manchester, 2000; Wilf, 2000; Mai, 2001; Johnson, 2002; Gümbel and Mai, 2004, 2006; Wang et al, 2005; Serbet et al, 2008; Estrada‐Ruiz et al, 2009). Donlesia dakotensis differs from extant and other fossil Ceratophyllum species by the following characters: (1) tetra‐radially symmetric fruits, (2) presence of two winged facial spines and a long peduncle, and (3) lack of other appendages on the fruit surface.…”

“…Fossil Ceratophyllum fruits have been reported from the Cretaceous of Canada (Serbet et al, 2008) and Mexico (Estrada‐Ruiz et al, 2009), the Tertiary of the United States (Axelrod, 1985; Herendeen et al, 1990; Manchester, 2000; Wilf, 2000; Johnson, 2002), the Middle Miocene of eastern China (Hu and Chaney, 1940; Wang et al, 2005), the Middle and Late Miocene of Europe (Dorofeev, 1963, 1974; Gregor, 1978; Mai and Walther, 1978; van der Burgh, 1983; Mai and Walther, 1988; Geissert et al, 1990; Dyjor et al, 1998; Mai, 2001; Gümbel and Mai, 2006), the Oligocene of Kazakhstan (Avakov, 1962), the Late Miocene of Austria (Knobloch, 1977), the Late Miocene and Pliocene of Japan (Ozaki, 1991), the Pliocene of Bulgaria (Palamarev, 1982; Mai and Wähnert, 2000) and Germany (van der Burgh, 1987; Gümbel and Mai, 2004), and the Holocene/Pleistocene of Canada (Terasmae and Craig, 1958; Ritchie and DeVries, 1964), Jordan (Ohlhorst et al, 1982), the Netherlands (Pals et al, 1980), northern Europe (Backman, 1943; Hessland, 1946; Griffin, 1980) and the United States (Watts and Bright, 1968; Gruger, 1973; Van Zant, 1979; Pierce and Tiffney, 1986). The purpose of this paper is to present a new genus within the family Ceratophyllaceae from the Lower Cretaceous of Kansas, USA based upon fruit and seed morphology.…”

Shoot Architecture and Branching Pattern in Perennial Hydatellaceae (Nymphaeales)

“…In theory, these fossils are potentially useful in understanding the evolution of shoot architecture and branching pattern in early angiosperms, but in practice, they rarely possess shoots with attached branches and reproductive structures. Ceratophyllumlike fruits and putative fruits of a potentially related plant, Ceratostratiotes (however, see, Meller and van Bergen 2003 regarding their similarity to seeds of Hydrocharitaceae), are known from the Cretaceous (Dilcher 1989;Krassilov 1997;Krassilov et al 2005;Estrada-Ruiz et al 2009), but shoots assignable to Ceratophyllum are described only from Tertiary deposits (Herendeen et al 1990;Wang et al 2005). The branching shoots illustrated by Wang et al (2005) are very similar to those of extant Ceratophyllum, but whether each branch lies on the same radius as one of the leaves of its node is not clear from the published illustrations.…”

“…Ceratophyllumlike fruits and putative fruits of a potentially related plant, Ceratostratiotes (however, see, Meller and van Bergen 2003 regarding their similarity to seeds of Hydrocharitaceae), are known from the Cretaceous (Dilcher 1989;Krassilov 1997;Krassilov et al 2005;Estrada-Ruiz et al 2009), but shoots assignable to Ceratophyllum are described only from Tertiary deposits (Herendeen et al 1990;Wang et al 2005). The branching shoots illustrated by Wang et al (2005) are very similar to those of extant Ceratophyllum, but whether each branch lies on the same radius as one of the leaves of its node is not clear from the published illustrations. The earliest known fossils of aquatic plants that are comparable (though not necessarily taxonomically closely related) to Nymphaeaceae and/or Cabombaceae provide no information about the evolution of the branching pattern.…”

Fossil Fruits of Ceratophyllum from the Upper Eocene and Miocene of South China

“…[ 7 , 8 ]. Oligocene to Pleistocene fossil fruits are relatively abundant and widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, including North America, Europe, and Asia [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ].…”