Format:
30 S : Ill.
ISBN:
0856650412
Series Statement:
Scientific reports / British Antarctic Survey 83
Content:
In this paper a number of Antarctic plant fossils, from a new area in Dronning Maud Land east of the Weddell Sea, are described. They were collected by members of the British Antarctic Survey during the period 1964 - 67, and include several genera and species which have not been found previously in Antarctica. They fill a gap in the early Permo-Carboniferous records of plant life in that continent. The paper is in three parts: the first part describes briefly the geological succession and geographical environment of the plant-fossil sites; the second part is a detailed description of the plants, and in the third part the composition, affinities, age and significance of the flora are discussed. The plant fragments were transported and the preservation is poor. There are fragments of lycopod, Paracalamites and fern stems, but the vast majority of the fossils are of woody stems and leaves whose closest affinities are with four different groups of gymnosperms: the cordaitean, ginkgoalean, coniferalean and glossopteridean classes. The dominance of such varied gymnospermous plants in this area at so early a stage is regareded as being highly significant in plant-distribution studies. It was a cold-climate flora, established in the closing stages of the Southern Hemisphere Palaeozoic glaciation, and can be compared with those of the Needle Shales of the Talchirs in India, the Upper Dwyka Shales of South Africa and possibly the Bacchus Marsh beds of Victoria, Australia, and is therefore of late Carboniferous or early Permian age. Like those described earlier from Antarctica, the flora emphasizes the uniformity and near contemporaneity of each stage of plant life throughout Gondwanaland.
Note:
MAB0014.001: ZSP-164-83
,
Bibliography: p. 28-30. - Alte Signaturen: AQ 3042/83 ; Th 14.093 ; 81.336
In:
Scientific reports
URL:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_bas/publications/scientific_reports/index.php
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