Compressions of Sequoia (Cupressaceae sensu lato ) from the Middle Jurassic of Daohugou, Ningcheng, Inner Mongolia, Chin
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Compressions of Sequoia (Cupressaceae sensu lato) from the Middle Jurassic of Daohugou, Ningcheng, Inner Mongolia, China Qing-Wen Ma 1
&
David K. Ferguson 2 & Hai-Ming Liu 1 & Jing-Xian Xu 1
Received: 14 January 2020 / Revised: 20 April 2020 / Accepted: 7 September 2020 # Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The specimens (two pairs of part and counterpart) of coniferalean branched leafy shoots were collected from the Jiulongshan Formation (Middle Jurassic) at the village of Daohugou, Ningcheng, Inner Mongolia, China. The fossil material displays helical phyllotaxy, dorsiventrally flattened linear, sessile leaves with decurrent base and prominent and single mid-vein. The foliate shoots are assigned to Sequoia jeholensis by comparing those of the genera Yanliaoa, Sequoia, Metasequoia, Taxodium, and Glyptostrobus, the basal members of the Cupressaceae sensu lato. Sequoia jeholensis is the oldest Sequoia species to date. It has coriaceous, dimorphic, helically arranged linear and scale leaves, with entire margins, attached obliquely to the axis by their decurrent bases. The leaf cuticle of S. jeholensis is described here for the first time. Leaves are hypostomatic, with stomata only on the abaxial surface. Anticlinal walls are straight, with single or more often paired pits. The epidermal structures of Sequoia are one of the key characters to distinguish it from similar genera, but they usually could not be used to distinguish the species within Sequoia. The Middle Jurassic of Daohugou represents a lacustrine environment with a warm and humid climate reflected by the species assemblage. So, the extinct Sequoia probably had similar climatic requirements to those of extant Sequoia sempervirens. Keywords Cupressaceae s.l. . Sequoia . Cuticle . Middle Jurassic . Jiulongshan Formation . China
Introduction Sequoia is one of the basal genera of the family Cupressaceae sensu lato (i.e. the former “Taxodiaceae”). Sequoia sempervirens (D. Don) Endl. is the only extant species of Sequoia, which is endemic to the coastal region of California and Oregon, USA (Farjon 2005). The fossil records of Sequoia can be traced back to the Jurassic and are widely reported from Upper Cretaceous to the lower Neogene in East Asia, North America, and Europe (Chaney 1951; Endo 1951; Florin 1963; Miller 1977; Ma et al. 2005a; Zhang et al. 2015). This article is a contribution to the special issue “Palaeobotanical contributions in honour of Volker Mosbrugger” * Qing-Wen Ma [email protected] * Jing-Xian Xu [email protected] 1
Beijing Museum of Natural History, Beijing 100050, People’s Republic of China
2
Department of Paleontology, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria
In the late Neogene, Sequoia became established in its present distributional area (i.e. North America), while in Europe and East Asia, it was no longer found (Sakai 1971). Cuticles, the standard source of epidermal information from compressions, are significant for the
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