The reconstruction consisted of the fitting of different organs of the plant, the main stem, the branches and the fructifications, as if it were a puzzle
A team of geologists from the University of Barcelona discovered and reconstructed the ‘Palaeonitella trifurcata’, a new fossil species of freshwater aquatic plant dated between about 120 and 125 million years.
As reported by this university in a statement, the discovery took place from plant organs found separately in a layer of calcareous rock in the Garraf Natural Park, within the Spanish municipality of Olivella.
The reconstruction consisted of the interlocking of the different organs of the plant – the main stem, the branches and the fructifications – as if they were the pieces of a puzzle. The work is published in the scientific journal Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology.
This aquatic plant is one of the few fossil carophytes, multicellular algae that are considered the ancestors of vascular plants, which have been completely reconstructed.
Plants from the past can often be preserved in the fossil record with separate organs, something that forces the scientific community to create different groups of related organisms to relate the different components and thus rebuild the entire plant.
“The most exceptional thing about the studied fossil is not that it has been preserved to date, but that it has been possible to relate its organs to each other to reconstruct the entire plant”, highlights the professor of the Department of Earth and Ocean Dynamics of the UB , Carles MartÃn-Closas.
The study of sedimentology and microfossils associated with ‘Palaeonitella trifurcata’ allows the reconstruction of a palaeoenvironment with freshwater coastal lagoons, connected laterally with bays protected from marine or brackish salinity.
In this Lower Cretaceous habitat (the historical stage to which the species belongs), typical organisms of shallow waters lived, as benthic foraminifera or chlorophytes of the dasicladales group, an order of the chlorophyll algae. (I)
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