Dispersed angiosperm cuticles: Their history, preparation, and application to the rise of angiosperms in Cretaceous and Paleocene coals, southern western interior of North America |
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| Authors: | Garland R Upchurch Jr |
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| Abstract: | Cuticle — the decay-resistant outer layer of leaves and young stems — provides a reliable means of identifying fossil plant remains and reflects the vegetative adaptations of plants to climate and other environmental parameters. The study of dispersed angiosperm cuticles originated prior to World War II and has focused on the origin and paleoecology of coal. Activity in dispersed cuticles reached a high point during the 1950s and 1960s with the study of Tertiary lignites in central Europe, then subsided in central Europe as workers from other regions expanded the technique to other time-periods and geographic regions. Data from dispersed cuticles augment data from palynomorphs because dispersed cuticles originate from a different generation of the vascular plant life cycle and have different taphonomic histories. Because the analysis of dispersed angiosperm cuticles is unfamiliar to many geologists, methods for the analysis and preparation of dispersed angiosperm cuticles are detailed in an appendix.Dispersed cuticle assemblages from coals in the upper Albian Longford Member of the Kiowa Formation and the Maastrichtian-Paleocene Raton Formation of the Southern Western Interior provide new constraints on the times that angiosperms entered coal swamps and rose to dominance. The Kiowa assemblages indicate that angiosperms first entered coal swamp environments by the late Albian, while the Raton assemblages indicate that angiosperms dominated primary productivity in some subtropical coal swamps by the late Maastrichtian. Angiosperms in Kiowa coals probably comprised pioneer species in conifer-dominated vegetation; the most common family of angiosperms was Chloranthaceae. Angiosperms in upper Maastrichtian Raton coals comprised the dominant seed plants to the exclusion of conifers; magnoliid dicots and monocots were the dominant taxa and comprised diverse genera and families. Evidence from palynology and types of preserved cuticle indicates that ferns were subordinate to seed plants in biomass in Raton coals, in contrast to some described assemblages from the Northern Western Interior. Paleocene coals from the Raton Basin show the loss of many Cretaceous angiosperm taxa as well as the appearance of new taxa, including conifers belonging to Taxodiaceae. However, these Taxodiaceae were evergreen and subordinate in abundance to angiosperms. Vegetational patterns shown by Cretaceous-Paleocene coals of the Southern Western Interior contrast with those of more northerly regions and indicate a poleward gradient in the timing of angiosperm dominance in coal swamps. |
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