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Abstract
The Paleocene Fossil-Lagerstätte Menat in France is well known for its wealth of outstandingly well preserved fossil insects and plants. Despite being known for more than a century, the palaeoflora, which is regarded as typical for the late Thanetian by some authors, has largely been neglected since the 1940s. New excavations and surveys yielded exceptionally well-preserved plant material, including a minute, heptamerous flower bearing in situ pollen tetrads, comparable to tetrads of the modern ericacean genus Kalmia L, in its anthers. The only known modern ericacean genus which is characterised by heptamerous flowers is Bejaria Mutis ex L., a basal relative of the tribe Phyllodoceae within Ericaceae, which also includes the genus Kalmia in a relatively basal position. However, heptamerous flowers also occur very rarely (mostly interpreted as teratologies) in a number of other modern Ericaceae, but also in various other modern angiosperm families. Due to the unique combination of a heptamerous flower with Kalmia-type pollen tetrads within the anthers, the new taxon Menatanthus mosbruggeri gen. nov. et sp. nov. is erected. The lack of morphological data from the flower itself and the fact that comparable pollen tetrads can be produced by a number of modern families, however, prevent an assignment of the new taxon to any known angiosperm family.
Highlights
The sedimentary deposition in many fossil maar lakes represents excellent archives for a diversity of continental biota
The locality is known for its unique wealth of excellently preserved fossil insects (e.g. Piton 1940; Wedmann et al 2018 and citations therein) and its macroflora (e.g. Laurent 1912, 1919; Piton 1940), the fossil flora is in a desperate need of a modern taxonomic revision
Fossil flowers are rare as compared to fossil leaves, wood and carpological remains (e.g. Collinson 2011), remains of flowers are well known from a number of Paleogene and Neogene lake deposits
Summary
The sedimentary deposition in many fossil maar lakes represents excellent archives for a diversity of continental biota. Europe comprise the Paleocene maar lake of Menat Wedmann et al 2018), the Eocene maar lakes of Messel The Paleocene deposits of Menat in France (Fig. 1) are of considerable interest for understanding the development of terrestrial ecosystems in Europe, as this maar lake provides one of the earliest European Fossil-Lagerstätten following the mass-extinction event at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary Laurent 1912, 1919; Piton 1940), the fossil flora is in a desperate need of a modern taxonomic revision (cf Wedmann et al, 2018). The flower is a significant addition to the flora known mostly from fossil leaves
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