Fagaceae pollen from the early Cenozoic of West Greenland: revisiting Engler’s and Chaney’s Arcto-Tertiary hypotheses

In this paper we document Fagaceae pollen from the Eocene of western Greenland. The pollen record suggests a remarkable diversity of the family in the early Cenozoic of Greenland. Extinct Fagaceae pollen types include Eotrigonobalanus, which extends at least back to the Paleocene, and two ancestral...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Plant systematics and evolution 2015-02, Vol.301 (2), p.809-832
Main Authors: Grímsson, Friðgeir, Zetter, Reinhard, Grimm, Guido W, Pedersen, Gunver Krarup, Pedersen, Asger Ken, Denk, Thomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acer
Aesculus
Alnus
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Cenozoic
Eocene
Fagaceae
Fagus
Flora
Fossils
Latitude
Life Sciences
Original
Original Article
Paleocene
Plant Anatomy/Development
Plant Ecology
Plant Sciences
Plant Systematics/Taxonomy/Biogeography
Pollen
Quercus
Ulmus
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Summary:In this paper we document Fagaceae pollen from the Eocene of western Greenland. The pollen record suggests a remarkable diversity of the family in the early Cenozoic of Greenland. Extinct Fagaceae pollen types include Eotrigonobalanus, which extends at least back to the Paleocene, and two ancestral pollen types with affinities to the Eurasian Quercus Group Ilex and the western North American Quercus Group Protobalanus. In addition, modern lineages of Fagaceae are unambiguously represented by pollen of Fagus, Quercus Group Lobatae/Quercus, and three Castaneoideae pollen types. These findings corroborate earlier findings from Axel Heiberg Island that Fagaceae were a dominant element at high latitudes during the early Cenozoic. Comparison with coeval or older mid-latitude records of modern lineages of Fagaceae shows that modern lineages found in western Greenland and Axel Heiberg likely originated at lower latitudes. Further examples comprise (possibly) Acer, Aesculus, Alnus, Ulmus, and others. Thus, before fossils belonging to modern northern temperate lineages will have been recovered from older (early Eocene, Paleocene) strata from high latitudes, Engler’s hypothesis of an Arctic origin of the modern temperate woody flora of Eurasia, termed ‘Arcto-Tertiary Element’, and later modification by R. W. Chaney and H. D. Mai (‘Arcto-Tertiary Geoflora’) needs to be modified.
ISSN:0378-2697
1615-6110
1615-6110
2199-6881
DOI:10.1007/s00606-014-1118-5