Distinguishing internal developmental characteristics from external palaeoenvironmental effects in fossil wood

Abstract

Fossil wood has the potential to record several aspects of the palaeoenvironment in which it grew. Ring width (especially cell number), latewood format, falserings and traumatic tissue are all important morphological characters. Other characters, such as ray dimensions, bark thickness and tracheid or vessel size, are also probably useful but as yet not fully understood. Unfortunately, all these characters vary within a tree depending on position of the wood: twig, branch, trunk, stump or root. It is thus important that the growing position of fosil fragments is identified so that comparisons of wood characters between sites can be made. Fossil examples of characters from woods from the Cretaceous of Antarctica and Alaska provide examples of palaeoenvironmental interpretation.