Cretaceous Lauraceae wood from El Rosario, Baja California, Mexico

Abstract

A new wood type for the Baja California Cretaceous adds to the plant diversity so far known for the area where gymnosperms seem to be dominant. It was collected near El Rosario, Baja California, from rocks of the Rosario Formation, in a sedimentary sequence that comprises ca. 1200 m of non-marine to deep marine sediments from Upper Campanian to Lower Danian age. The wood is characterized by having semiring porous growth rings, predominantly radial multiples of 2–7 with occasional clusters and some solitary vessels, simple perforation plates, alternate intervascular pits, oval to large elliptical vessel element-ray pits with reduced borders, septate thin-walled fibers, 1–4 seriate heterocellular rays, scares paratracheal, vasicentric and marginal parenchyma and oil cells associated with ray parenchyma. All these characters are found in Lauraceae, however, none of the extant taxa of the family have all these characters and even among fossil woods the characters in the Baja California material are better described only among the diverse Laurinoxylon, but vessel grouping, growth ring type, absence of marginal parenchyma, and slightly thicker rays suggest the presence of a new taxon, Rosarioxylon bajacaliforniensis Cevallos-Ferriz, Catharina & Kneller. By the end of the Cretaceous the family formed part of the plant community that represents a western extension of vegetation types more completely described from areas in the margins of the southern limits of the Western Interior Sea. The new taxon is proposed to highlight anatomical differences and geographic isolation from similar taxa and further suggests a large distribution of Lauraceae in what appears to be conifer dominated communities.