Reconstructing the terrestrial flora and marine plankton of the Middle Devonian of Spain: implications for biotic interchange and palaeogeography

Abstract

A rich and well-preserved palynomorph assemblage from the Middle Devonian of northern Spain is analysed with regard to palaeobiogeography and palaeocontinental reconstruction. The communities of terrestrial plants (dispersed spores), marine zooplankton (chitinozoans) and marine phytoplankton (acritarchs and prasinophytes) all show significant endemism. They are depauperate in some respects, missing common species found elsewhere, but also containing many endemic taxa. Measures of similarity and cluster analysis reveal little relatedness to other contemporary assemblages, with both the spore and phytoplankton communities being sister groups to all other communities except one. Attempted correlation with local, regional and global sea-level and transgression–regression schemes is complicated by the absence of key index palynomorphs in this unusual assemblage. The distinctive sedimentary sequence of northern Spain may reflect an increased clastic input to the marine shelf resulting from an increasingly monsoonal climate, possibly connected to the Kačák extinction event. The assemblage s unusual, endemic character requires restrictions on dispersal. The terrestrial spore assemblage suggests that large tracts of ocean existed, without appreciable land bridges, between the Armorican Terrane Assemblage and Laurussia to the north and Gondwana to the south. The phytoplankton communities support existing evidence for significant east to west ocean currents through the Rheic Ocean. Supplementary material: Supplementary Tables 1–3 contain presence–absence data for spores, chitinozoans and phytoplankton respectively, in various assemblages, used to construct the dendrograms in Figures 4–6. The tables are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4726862