Enriching the Late Devonian plant record of Australia: A Frasnian assemblage from Gooloogong, New South Wales

Late Devonian plant Leptophloeum rhombi-cum (Dawson, 1862) is newly discovered from the “Suberidani lenticular body” of the Kurosegawa Belt in Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku, Southwest Japan. The twelve specimens are well-preserved in fine-grained sandstone, and the morphologic information may be useful for paleontological study of Leptophloeum. The presence of the Upper Devonian strata has been confirmed now by this fossil evidence in the Tokushima Prefecture. The bed composed of conglomerate, sandstone and shale, about 20 m thick, lies on the Siluro-Devonian Suberidani Group. The relationship between the Upper Devonian and the underlying “Bed G4” of the Suberidani Group seems to be unconformable.

A new Late Devonian plant assemblage in West Junggar, Xinjiang, China and its floral evolution during the Devonian

Discovery of Late Devonian plants from the southern Yellow Sea borehole of China and its palaeogeographical implications

Tyloses are swellings of parenchyma cells into adjacent water-conducting cells that develop in vascular plants as part of heartwood formation or specifically in response to embolism and pathogen infection. Here we document tyloses in Late Devonian (approximately 360 Myr ago) Callixylon wood. This discovery suggests that some of the earliest woody trees were already capable of protecting their vascular system by occluding individual conducting cells.

A Late Devonian plant assemblage from New South Wales, Australia: Diversity and specificity

Wang Yi, Fu Qiang, Xu Honghe, & Hao Shougang, June, 2007. A new Late Silurian plant with complex branching from Xinjiang, China. Alcheringa 31, 111-120. ISSN 0311-5518. A new fossil plant is described from the middle part of the Wutubulake Formation (late Pridoli) of Xinjiang, China. This plant demonstrates at least two orders of branching. The first-order axis has pseudomonopodial branching with alternately attached second-order axes. Fertile units are alternately inserted along the second-order axis, and consist of a branching system and two sporangia at each tip. Sporangia are narrowly obovate with rounded apex and tapering base. This plant is characterized by more complex branching than other Silurian and Early Devonian plants, and is named Wutubulaka multidichotoma gen. et sp. nov., and placed under open higher-order nomenclature.

The first plants related to the ferns are represented by several extinct groups that emerged during the Devonian.Among them, the iridopterids are closely allied to the sphenopsids, a group represented today by the genus Equisetum.They have been documented in Middle to early Late Devonian deposits of Laurussia and the Kazakhstan plate.Their Gondwanan record is poor, with occurrences limited to Venezuela and Morocco.Here we describe a new genus from a late Late Devonian locality of New South Wales.It is represented by a single anatomically preserved large stem characterized by a star-shaped vascular system with protoxylem strands located at rib tips, and by a lack of secondary tissues.Within the first fern-like plants, this stem shares the largest number of characters with iridopterid axes but differs by the pattern of its vascular system.Keraphyton mawsoniae gen.et sp.nov.adds a new record of early fern-like plants in eastern Gondwana.It provides new insights into the anatomical diversity within this key group of plants and supports the distinctiveness of the Australian flora in the latest Devonian.

Peer Review #3 of "Keraphyton gen. nov., a new Late Devonian fern-like plant from Australia (v0.2)"

Peer Review #2 of "Keraphyton gen. nov., a new Late Devonian fern-like plant from Australia (v0.1)"

Peer Review #3 of "Keraphyton gen. nov., a new Late Devonian fern-like plant from Australia (v0.1)"

Pollen organ Telangiopsis sp., associated with but not attached to vegetative fronds, has been collected from the Upper Devonian (Famennian) Wutong Formation, Dongzhi County, Anhui Province, China. Fertile axes with terminal pollen organs are dichotomous for 2–4 times and may be proximally attached by fragmentary pinnules. Pollen organs are synangiate and borne on the top of a short stalk. Synangia are radial in symmetry and each consists of 4–8 elongate microsporangia fused at base. Microsporangia have a longitudinal dehiscence line and show a tapered apex. The associated stem is spiny and bears a vegetative frond which bifurcates once at the basalmost part. Frond rachises possess one order of pinna arranged alternately. Pinnules are borne alternately, planate, highly dissected, and equally dichotomous for 2–3 times. Comparisons among Late Devonian seed plants recognize several branching patterns in the fertile fronds/axes bearing terminal pollen organs. Telangiopsis sp. reinforces that the Late Devonian pollen organs are synangiate usually with basally fused microsporangia. It is suggested that the evolutionary divergence of radial and bilateral symmetries of pollen organs may have occurred in the Famennian, when the earliest seed plants evolved planate and sometimes laminate pinnules.

Plant fossils from the Avon Gorge originally identified asRhacophytonsp. have been subjected to a detailed morphological study incorporating examination of both previously known material and new specimens. A single taxon,Chlidanophyton dublinensis, dominates the assemblage accounting for over 90% of the fossils encountered. Other plant organs identified include dispersed acupulate preovules and five less frequently occurring organs of which four are of unknown affinities; the leaf genusPlatyphyllum, Alicornopterissptwo kinds of novel and frequently dichotomizing branching structures and the spermatophyte synangiumTelangiopsis.Possible whole plant relationships between the components of the fossil assemblage are discussed and the stratigraphic, systematic and evolutionary position of the component taxa are considered.

Discovery of Late Devonian plants from the "Yuzuruha" Formation, Kyushu, Southwest Japan.

Geologic and Geochemical Features of the Upper Devonian Coals of the North Timan (the Sula River Coal Field)

Three species of Middle and Late Devonian plants of the Donets Basin from the paleobotanical collection of M.I. Ustinovskaya at the Geological Museum of Kiev National University of T. Shevchenko are described, viz. Sphenopteridium kelhaui Nathorst , vegetative and fertile shoots of Barrandeina sp. 1 that were determined for the first time in the Donets Basin, as well as fertile shoots of Bowmanites sp. 1 found in association with the sphenophylls vegetative foliage of the Sphenophyllum stylicum Ischenko.