Permian vegetational Pompeii from Inner Mongolia and its implications for landscape paleoecology and paleobiogeography of Cathaysia

Abstract

Plant communities of the geologic past can be reconstructed with high fidelity only if they were preserved in place in an instant in time. Here we report such a flora from an early Permian (ca. 298 Ma) ash-fall tuff in Inner Mongolia, a time interval and area where such information is filling a large gap of knowledge. About 1,000 m 2 of forest growing on peat could be reconstructed based on the actual location of individual plants. Tree ferns formed a lower canopy and either Cordaites, a coniferophyte, or Sigillaria, a lycopsid, were present as taller trees. Noeggerathiales, an enigmatic and extinct spore-bearing plant group of small trees, is represented by three species that have been found as nearly complete specimens and are presented in reconstructions in their plant community. Landscape heterogenity is apparent, including one site where Noeggerathiales are dominant. This peat-forming flora is also taxonomically distinct from those growing on clastic soils in the same area and during the same time interval. This Permian flora demonstrates both similarities and differences to floras of the same age in Europe and North America and confirms the distinct character of the Cathaysian floral realm. Therefore, this flora will serve as a baseline for the study of other fossil floras in East Asia and the early Permian globally that will be needed for a better understanding of paleoclimate evolution through time.coal-swamp plant community | plant paleoecology | volcanic ash-fall tuff | Wuda

Remnants of an ancient forest provide ecological context for Early Miocene fossil apes

“…The total area used as a basis of developing forest estimates was 930.11 m 2 , comparable to other palaeoreconstructions 41 . We compared the calculated values of density and basal area for trees Z30 cm DBH and for trees Z60 cm DBH with those of contemporary forests taken from the Smithsonian Center for Tropical Forest Science plot network 18,21,42 .…”

Leaf fossil record suggests limited influence of atmospheric CO 2 on terrestrial productivity prior to angiosperm evolution

“…More generally, the paleobotanical record is biased toward preservation of woody plants of forest canopies and more open environments because herbs and shrubs of the shaded forest floor produce fewer leaves and their leaves have less opportunity for transport to waterway-based sites of deposition and are more prone to decay (31,32). The cases in which all plants are preserved equally are rare (33,34). Thus, a few of the lower bound outliers of vein density may well represent tolerators of deep shade, but the median vein density for each time interval is sometimes less than 2 mm mm −2 and is never more than 2.6 mm mm −2 for each high-CO 2 time interval (Fig.…”

Wetland-Dryland Vegetational Dynamics in the Pennsylvanian Ice Age Tropics

“…That is, they are not directionally time-transgressive deposits, significantly older at the shelf edge and progressively younger inland; they did not form in narrow coastal bands being pushed continuously inland by rising sea level ahead of other narrow bands of marine muds and limestones. This time equivalence is indicated by such features as ash-fall partings in several coal beds: the Fire Clay coal of the Southern Appalachian Basin (Lyons et al 1992;Greb et al 1999b), several coals in the mid-Pennsylvanian of the Czech Republic , and a Pennsylvanian-Permian coal from the Wuda District in China (Pfefferkorn and Wang 2007;Wang et al 2012). Also indicative of widespread age synchrony are mineral partings continuously recognizable throughout coal beds: the "binder" beds, which separate petrographically and palynologically distinct benches of the Pittsburgh coal of the Central Appalachian Basin (Gresley 1894;Eble et al 2006), or by the blue band of the Herrin coal of the Illinois Basin, which may carry into equivalent coal beds in the Midcontinent (Greb et al 2003).…”