New angiosperm pollen from the upper Barremian‐Aptian of the Western Desert, Egypt

Abstract

The Lower Cretaceous Alam El Bueib and Alamein formations in the Ghazalat‐1 (GTX‐1) well, Western Desert, Egypt, consist of marginal marine siliciclastic sediments, overlain by the Aptian evaporites (dolomite of the upper Alamein Formation). Angiosperm species diversity is reasonably high, and account for 8.0–22.0% of the total palynomorphs. Most of these species might belong to monosulcate, zonasulculate, and inaperturate pollen. The genus Afropollis is emended herein to include forms with monosulcoid aperture. The following two new subspecies and seven new species are described: Afropollis operculatus operculatus, Afropollis operculatus microreticulatus subsp.nov., Afropollis schrankii sp. nov., Arecipites microfoveolatus sp. nov., Retimonocolpites bueibensis sp. nov., Retimonocolpites ghazalii sp. nov., Stellatopollis dejaxii sp. nov., Stellatopollis doylei sp. nov. and Stellatopollis limai sp. nov. In addition, one new combination is proposed: Arecipites pereensis (Juhász and Góczán) comb. nov. Three palynomorph assemblages (A1‐A3) are assigned to the upper Barremian and lower‐middle Aptian. These assemblages show close correlation and similarity with the palynozones C‐VI, C‐VIIa and C‐VIIc of the “Cocobeach System”;, West Africa and Zone I of the Potomac Group, USA. Sediments of the Alam El Bueib and basal Alamein formations accumulated in a marginal shallow marine environment under arid to semiarid climatic conditions.