Abstract Detail

Paleobotanical Section

Duijnstee, Ivo A.P. [1], Hartman, Julian D. [2], Kouwenberg, Lenny R. [3], Kustatscher, Evelyn [4], Looy, Cindy V [5].

Botanical affinity of dispersed conifer cuticle fragments from the latest Permian: a quantitative approach for the description of leaf-epidermal patterns.

By the Late Permian so-called ‘voltzian’ conifers were prominent in plant communities of the equatorial Euramerican province, which covered the southern part of North America and Europe. Late Permian voltzian conifers are evolutionarily important as they gave rise to most of the extant families. Most of the late Permian Euramerican conifers are known from compression floras, and only few specimens are anatomically preserved. Studies of bulk-macerated dispersed cuticle fragments – mainly from the Italian Bletterbach locality in the western Dolomites – have provided more detailed information on a selected number of taxa. Unfortunately, it is impossible to reconstruct, for instance, the growth habit of conifers based on cuticle fragments alone. Recently, a new macrofossil horizon from the Bletterbach was described. This fossil assemblage is seedplant-dominated, and contains well-preserved conifer macrofossils with leaf cuticles. For this study, we macerated and photographed leaf cuticles from macrofloral remains of the Bletterbach conifers. Whereas most studies that employ cuticles as taxonomic proxy use qualitative characteristics, we focused on developing quantitative methods to describe epidermal features, thus linking gross plant morphology of the macrofossils to epidermal pattern data. This established relation can now be used to arrive at better floral reconstructions for records of dispersed cuticle fragments.

Broader Impacts:

1 - UC Berkeley/Utrecht University, Dep. of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology/Dep. of Earth Sciences, Berkeley/Utrecht, USA/The Netherlands
2 - Utrecht University, Dep. of Earth Sciences, Utrecht, The Netherlands
3 - Utrecht, The Netherlands
4 - Naturmuseum Südtirol, Bolzano, Italy
5 - UC Berkeley, Dep. of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, USA

Keywords:
voltzian conifers
end Permian
cuticles
epidermal patterns
botanical affinity
Bletterbach, Italy.

Presentation Type: Poster:Posters for Sections
Session: P
Location: Grand Salon A - D/Riverside Hilton
Date: Monday, July 29th, 2013
Time: 5:30 PM
Number: PPB007
Abstract ID:822
Candidate for Awards:None