Diverse Fruits And Seeds Of The Mid-Eocene Kishenehn Formation, Northwestern Montana, Usa, And Their Implications For Biogeography
Author
Smith, MacKenzie A.
Author
Greenwalt, Dale E.
Author
Manchester, Steven R.
text
Fossil Imprint
2023
2023-11-07
79
1
37
88
http://dx.doi.org/10.37520/fi.2023.004
journal article
10.37520/fi.2023.004
2533-4069
10481035
Pteroheterochrosperma horseflyensis
sp. nov.
Text-fig. 12a
P l a n t F o s s i l N a m e s R e g i s t r y. PFN003031
(for new species).
E t y m o l o g y. The specific epithet is for the Horsefly,
British Columbia
where the first fossils of this species were described.
H o l o t y p e. USNM PAL 722530, National Museum of
Natural History,
District of Columbia
,
USA
,
Text-fig. 12a
.
Ty p e h o r i z o n a n d t y p e l o c a l i t y.DakinSite in the Kishenehn Formation, ca. 44 Ma.
S p e c i f i c d i a g n o s i s. Winged structure circular; wing has thick striations (up to
0.1 mm
) radiating around seed body starting from the seed body and mostly terminating at the margin of the wing, some striations bifurcating; seed body obovate with rugulate sculpture.
S i z e. Structure
2.1 mm
tall,
2.7 mm
wide; seed body
1.28 mm
tall,
0.77 mm
wide.
D e s c r i p t i o n. Roughly 27 striations radiating from the seed body, some bifurcating or trifurcating.
R e m a r k s. Similar disseminules have been found from the early Eocene Okanogan sites of Republic, WA (
Pigg and Wehr 2002
), McAbee, BC and Horsefly, BC (UWBMB4131-96008, DSCN6543).
Penhallow (1908)
assigned specimens from Horsefly of this disseminule as
Ulmus minuta
GOEPP
.
(94–95), which was a leaf species, but he recognized that the fruit was much smaller than other known fossil and modern elms.
U. minuta
is a synonym for
Ulmus pyramidalis
(
GOEPPERT
) emend.
ILJINSK
.
(
Takhtajan 1982
,
Traiser et al. 2019
).
U. pyramidalis
DIPPEL
was already in use for a different extant elm and was recognized as a synonym of
Ulmus glabra
HUDS
.
U. glabra
’s modern geographic range includes Europe and western Asia but its fruits lack the thick, darkened veins that appear in the fossil and possess two styles which the fossil lacks (
Thomas et al. 2018
,
Sherman-Broyles 2021
). These tiny disseminules lack the wing venation and stylar cleft and style diagnostic for
Ulmus
, and thus require a new binomial.