New data about Early Cretaceous Ginkgoales from southwestern Europe (middle-late Albian of Spain)

Abstract

We present in this work a leaf-type corresponding to the Ginkgoales genus Sphenobaiera recorded in deposits from the middle-upper Albian (Lower Cretaceous) of northeastern Spain. The fossil leaf shows a widely dissected lamina that forks regularly six times ending at the apex in sixty-four tiny wedge-shaped segments, which are characters similar to those in Sphenobaiera pecten from the Middle Jurassic of England. The exceptional preservation of this fossil leaf, which preserves all segments in connection with its base, in addition to taphonomical and sedimentological data, indicates a nearby location for the parent plant, which grew near the shores of a tidally-influenced fluvial environment. A palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the sub-environments where the different types of Ginkgoales known from the Albian of northeastern Spain developed is also presented. The presence of a variety of different types of Ginkgoales in middle-upper Albian deposits from Spain represents a new contribution to the knowledge of the palaeoenvironmental conditions for this region of southwestern Eurasia during the late Early Cretaceous.