Palynological evidence for Pennsylvanian (Late Carboniferous) vegetation change in the Sydney Coalfield, eastern Canada

Abstract

The palynology of clastic samples from seven stratigraphical levels in the late Moscovian Sydney Mines Formation, exposed along the shore at Bras d'Or, Nova Scotia, has been investigated. Most of the samples were from roof shales of major coals; the one sample that was not yielded a much higher proportion of pollen derived from extra-basinal vegetation. The four stratigraphically lower roof shale samples yielded essentially similar palynological spectra, with 39 AE 4% lycophytes, 9 AE 4% sphenophylls, 23 AE 4% tree-ferns, 12 AE 4% other ferns and 5 AE 3% cordaites. The palynology of the upper part of the investigated succession suggests a shift in vegetation towards one favouring more marattialean treeferns, cordaites and conifers, and fewer lycophytes. This correlates with changes in drainage patterns as the alluvial plain migrated seawards and thus changed water tables. No evidence was found to suggest significant climate change at this time.

Wetland-Dryland Vegetational Dynamics in the Pennsylvanian Ice Age Tropics

“…Thus, the populations of seasonally dry plants are proposed to have occupied well-drained areas at the same times that wetland plants occupied non-well-drained bottomlands. A generally unspoken corollary to this is that climate was constantly wet in the Pennsylvanian tropical belt, necessary to permit peat formation somewhere in the basinal bottomlands at all times (Remy 1975;Broutin et al 1990;Dimitrova et al 2010). These models generally do not explicitly call for changes in climate with increasing elevation, though this might be expected in mountainous areas if the mountains are high enough and could account for background pollen rain from conifers into lower-elevation intermontane wetlands (Broutin et al 1990;Dimitrova et al 2005Dimitrova et al , 2011Falcon-Lang 2006;Bashforth et al 2011;Dolby et al 2011;Opluštil et al 2013b).…”

Factors controlling the vegetation distribution and coal‐forming environments in a strike‐slip basin. The Pennsylvanian Peñarroya‐Belmez‐Espiel Basin, southern Spain

“…The species identified were generically assigned to major parent plant groups according to the information and compilations provided by Smith and Butterworth (), Balme (), Dimitrova et al . (, ) and Traverse (). Where assignment to a specific parent plant group proved problematic, the affinity was scored as ‘unknown’.…”

New data on the macroflora of the basal Rotliegend group (Remigiusberg Formation; Gzhelian) in the Saar-Nahe basin (SW-Germany)

“…Although Barthel (2006), in a study on Rotliegend plants from the Thuringian Forest Basin mentioned the occurrence of this taxon in the Rotliegend of the Saar-Nahe Basin, there seems to be no confirmed published record of this taxon from this particular basin so far. An American record of this taxon from the Early Permian of Colorado (Pfefferkorn and Resnik 1980) was later questioned by Dimitrova et al (2010) as a potential misidentification. However, a similar form has also been reported from the Pennsylvanian of Texas as "Sphenopteridium of the Sphenopteris germanica type" (e.g.…”