The Late Cretaceous flora of the New Siberia Island (Arctic Russia): E. von Toll's and J.T. Schmalhausen's palaeobotanical heritage revisited

Abstract

After Edouard von Toll discovered Late Cretaceous plant fossils on the southern coast of New Siberia Island (Arctic Russia) in 1886 and Schmalhausen described them in 1890, no further work has been undertaken on von Toll's collection. However, palaeobotanists widely use the list of these plants based on line drawings from the paper by Schmalhausen. Here we re-examine von Toll's specimens and for the first time illustrate them by photographs. We apply а modern taxonomic nomenclature for the fossil plant remains and designate holotypes and lectotypes for the species previously described by Schmalhausen: Agathis (?) tollii (Schmalhausen) Baikovskaya, Sequoia tenuifolia (Schmalhausen) Sveshnikova et Budantsev, Nyssidium geminatum Schmalhausen and N. spicatum Schmalhausen.