Abstract
In this paper we document Fagaceae pollen from the Eocene of western Greenland. The pollen record suggests a remarkable diversity of the family in the early Cenozoic of Greenland. Extinct Fagaceae pollen types include Eotrigonobalanus, which extends at least back to the Paleocene, and two ancestral pollen types with affinities to the Eurasian Quercus Group Ilex and the western North American Quercus Group Protobalanus. In addition, modern lineages of Fagaceae are unambiguously represented by pollen of Fagus, Quercus Group Lobatae/Quercus, and three Castaneoideae pollen types. These findings corroborate earlier findings from Axel Heiberg Island that Fagaceae were a dominant element at high latitudes during the early Cenozoic. Comparison with coeval or older mid-latitude records of modern lineages of Fagaceae shows that modern lineages found in western Greenland and Axel Heiberg likely originated at lower latitudes. Further examples comprise (possibly) Acer, Aesculus, Alnus, Ulmus, and others. Thus, before fossils belonging to modern northern temperate lineages will have been recovered from older (early Eocene, Paleocene) strata from high latitudes, Engler’s hypothesis of an Arctic origin of the modern temperate woody flora of Eurasia, termed ‘Arcto-Tertiary Element’, and later modification by R. W. Chaney and H. D. Mai (‘Arcto-Tertiary Geoflora’) needs to be modified.
Highlights
Engler (1882) noted a close relationship between Cenozoic plant assemblages of the Arctic region and the modern northern temperate woody flora
The fossil Fagaceae pollen described here originate within the Nuussuaq Basin from sediments of the middle Eocene Aamaruutissaa Member of the Hareøen Formation, on the island Hareøen, West Greenland
The SE point of the island is cut by the NE-SW striking Itilli Fault Zone, which continues across western Nuussuaq (Chalmers et al 1999; Fig. 1)
Summary
Engler (1882) noted a close relationship between Cenozoic plant assemblages of the Arctic region and the modern northern temperate woody flora. Chaney (1959) extended this concept into a broader context, establishing the term ‘Arcto-Tertiary-Geoflora’ Based on his observation that Cenozoic floras of the northern Pacific Basin were markedly similar, Chaney concluded that they ‘‘must all have had a common area of origin during Cretaceous and early Tertiary time at high northern latitudes, where we find their earliest record of their occurrence’’ (Chaney 1959). He defined a ‘geoflora’ as being ‘‘a group of plants which has maintained itself with only minor changes in composition for several epochs or periods of
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