Glossopteris
Glossopteris [1] is the largest and best-known genus of the extinct seed ferns.
History [change]
The Glossopteridales arose in the Southern Hemisphere around the beginning of the Permian (~300 milliom years ago). Their distribution across several continents led Eduard Suess to suggest the southern continents were once together in a single supercontinent – Gondwana.
These plants went on to become the dominant elements of the southern flora through the rest of the Permian but disappeared in almost all places at the end of the Permian (~250mya).
The only convincing Triassic records are very earliest Triassic leaves from Nidpur, India. Even these records are somewhat questionable owing to faulting and complex juxtapositioning of Permian and Triassic strata at Nidpur.
Although most modern palaeobotany textbooks cite the continuation of glossopterids into later parts of the Triassic and, in some cases into the Jurassic, these are mistakes based on misidentification of similar leaves such as those of Gontriglossa, Sagenopteris, or Mexiglossa.
Glossopterids were, thus, one of the major casualties of the end-Permian mass-extinction event.[2]
References [change]
- ↑ Greek glossa (γλώσσα), meaning "tongue", because the leaves were tongue-shaped
- ↑ McLoughlin S; Lindström S. & Drinnan A.N. 1997. Gondwanan floristic and sedimentological trends during the Permian-Triassic transition: new evidence from the Amery Group, northern Prince Charles Mountains, East Antarctica. Antarctic Science, 9: 281-298.
