Some carbonized plants

Older The Better

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Apr 24, 2017
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south east kansas
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Here’s a sample of some of the carbonized plants. I’ve identified some as calamities and the name of the blade like leaves escape me but if I heard it I’d know it. All are just an inch or two, sorry no scale. The pics were originally meant for my own personal catalogue and I always found a ruler or scale distracting. As usual se Kansas, Pennsylvanian age rocks. Any other info/input would be great

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Side note: was tired went to bed way to early so here I am posting at 3am haha.
 

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Wish I could help but they seem like nice examples.
I've never found examples of mineralized plants down here in SE Florida.
Congrats.
 

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More cool stuff.

The leaflets are "Pecopteris”. Again, as for the "Stigmaria" you showed on another post this is a “form genus”, which means we assign fossil leaves and fronds from probably several hundred indeterminate plants into this genus, together with a species name where possible. But the classification is based on their shape and physical features, even though the plants they came from may only be loosely related to one another.

They’re from a mixture of fern types, including seed ferns and tree ferns, from low-growing ones up to those with heights of about 30 feet. Although often indeterminate (or uncertain) for the true genus in a taxonomic sense, many Pecopteris leaves seem to be representative of the extinct tree fern genus Psaronius.
 

Cool! I remember finding those types of fern fossils when I lived near Hamilton, Ks.
 

More cool stuff.

The leaflets are "Pecopteris”. Again, as for the "Stigmaria" you showed on another post this is a “form genus”, which means we assign fossil leaves and fronds from probably several hundred indeterminate plants into this genus, together with a species name where possible. But the classification is based on their shape and physical features, even though the plants they came from may only be loosely related to one another.

They’re from a mixture of fern types, including seed ferns and tree ferns, from low-growing ones up to those with heights of about 30 feet. Although often indeterminate (or uncertain) for the true genus in a taxonomic sense, many Pecopteris leaves seem to be representative of the extinct tree fern genus Psaronius.

You are very prolific, keep up the good work.
 

Awesome information again. Thank you, psaronius was one of the id’s I couldn’t remember but the leaves were something else I know ill butcher it if I’m even remembering right but does mueropteris or something like that ring a bell?

Also do you think the last one is a seed or just an unusual rock inclusion/formation
 

Awesome information again. Thank you, psaronius was one of the id’s I couldn’t remember but the leaves were something else I know ill butcher it if I’m even remembering right but does mueropteris or something like that ring a bell?

Also do you think the last one is a seed or just an unusual rock inclusion/formation

You’re probably thinking of “Neuropteris”. It’s another common Pennsylvanian-age seed fern, for which we have sufficiently well-preserved fossils to reliably assign a species in most cases. These are British specimens (my collection):

Neuropteris heterophylla.jpg Neuropteris hollandica.JPG

The limestone specimen is Neuropteris heterophylla and the specimen in the split nodule is Neuropteris hollandica. Neuropteris has a wide distribution in deposits of the right type and age; it’s commonly found in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania and the general St. Clair area, but also elsewhere.

I confess I didn’t look too closely at the last picture but, looking again, it does look like it might be a seed (although you haven’t given any indication of size). That would also be a neat find. These are from Pennsylvanian medullosan seed ferns (from Illinois):

Pennsylvanian Seeds.gif

Not my specimens, but pictured on Berkley University of California’s Museum of Palaeontology website. This is another area where we mostly assign specimens to a “form genus” based on shape and appearance; the form genus we use for these seed structures is “Trignocarpus”.
 

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