New record of conifer wood Agathoxylon from the Upper Jurassic in the Sichuan Basin, southern China, and its palaeobiodiversity and palaeoclimatic significance

Although abundant and diverse foliage fossils are well recorded in the Upper Triassic and Lower-Middle Jurassic of the Sichuan Basin in South China, the Upper Jurassic plant fossils are rarely documented due to extensively developed red beds in this basin. Decades ago, abundant fossil wood specimens...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Historical Biology
Main Authors: Xie, Aowei, Wang, Yongdong, Tian, Ning, Jiang, Zikun, Xie, Xiaoping, Xi, Shuna, Uhl, Dieter
Format: Report
Language:English
Published: TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD 2024
Subjects:
Agathoxylon
Kimmeridgian-Tithonian
Palaeoclimate
Shehong
LA MATILDE FORMATION
SANTA-CRUZ PROVINCE
FOSSIL WOODS
PETRIFIED FOREST
GROWTH-RINGS
BIODIVERSITY
ANTARCTICA
MOUNTAINS
SP
Life Sciences & Biomedicine - Other Topics
Paleontology
Biology
Antarc*
Antarctica
Online Access:http://ir.nigpas.ac.cn/handle/332004/43508
http://ir.nigpas.ac.cn/handle/332004/43509
https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2024.2322530
Description
Summary:Although abundant and diverse foliage fossils are well recorded in the Upper Triassic and Lower-Middle Jurassic of the Sichuan Basin in South China, the Upper Jurassic plant fossils are rarely documented due to extensively developed red beds in this basin. Decades ago, abundant fossil wood specimens were discovered from the Upper Jurassic Penglaizhen Formation in the Sichuan Basin. However, detailed investigations on the systematic palaeobotany of these wood fossils are very limited, which hinders further understanding of the terrestrial ecosystem and biota. Here, we describe anatomically well-preserved fossil wood specimens from the Penglaizhen Formation at Wangjiagou Village of Shehong City in the central Sichuan Province. These wood fossils exhibit Agathoxylon anatomy with usually uniseriate contiguous radial tracheid pitting and araucarioid cross-field pitting, representing a new record of Agathoxylon in the Sichuan Basin, and contribute to further understanding of the vegetation composition of the southern phytoprovince in China during the Late Jurassic. Independent palaeoclimatic evidence from leaf, pollen and sediments indicates that the Agathoxylon trees from Shehong area have grown under generally hot and semi-arid or arid environmental conditions, probably in habitats at the banks of rivers and lakes with locally abundant water supply, as indicated by the indistinct growth rings.

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