N. Rubén Cúneo

Eocene Plant Diversity at Laguna del Hunco and Rio Pichileufu ´ , Patagonia, Argentina

The origins of South America’s exceptional plant diversity are poorly known from the fossil record. We report on unbiased quantitative collections of fossil floras from Laguna del Hunco (LH) and Río Pichileufú (RP) in Patagonia, Argentina. These sites represent a frost‐free humid biome in South American middle latitudes of the globally warm Eocene. At LH, from 4,303 identified specimens, we recognize 186 species of plant organs and 152 species of leaves. Adjusted for sample size, the LH flora is more diverse than comparable Eocene floras known from other continents. The RP flora shares several taxa with LH and appears to be as rich, although sampling is preliminary. The two floras were previously considered coeval. However, 40Ar/39Ar dating of three ash‐fall tuff beds in close stratigraphic association with the RP flora indicates an age of \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

Oldest Known Eucalyptus Macrofossils Are from South America

47.46\pm 0.05

Permian phytogeography in Gondwana

\end{document} Ma, 4.5 million years younger than LH, for which one tuff is reanalyzed here as \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

In situ fossil forest from the upper Fremouw Formation (Triassic) of Antarctica: paleoenvironmental setting and paleoclimate analysis

51.91\pm 0.22

Seed cone anatomy of Cheirolepidiaceae (Coniferales): Reinterpreting Pararaucaria patagonica Wieland

\end{document} Ma. Thus, diverse floral associations in Patagonia evolved by the Eocene, possibly in response to global warming, and were persistent and areally extensive. This suggests extraordinary richness at low latitudes via the latitudinal diversity gradient, corroborated by published palynological data from the Eocene of Colombia.

Depositional framework of Permian coal-bearing strata, southern Victoria Land, Antarctica

Few South American macrofloras of Paleocene age are known, and this limits our knowledge of diversity and composition between the end-Cretaceous event and the Eocene appearance of high floral diversity. We report new, unbiased collections of 2516 compression specimens from the Paleocene Salamanca Formation (ca. 61.7 Ma) from two localities in the Palacio de los Loros exposures in southern Chubut, Patagonia, Argentina. Our samples reveal considerably greater richness than was previously known from the Paleocene of Patagonia, including 36 species of angiosperm leaves as well as angiosperm fruits, flowers, and seeds; ferns; and conifer leaves, cones, and seeds. The floras, which are from siltstone and sandstone channel-fills deposited on low-relief floodplain landscapes in a humid, warm temperate climate, are climatically and paleoenvironmentally comparable to many quantitatively collected Paleocene floras from the Western Interior of North America. Adjusted for sample size, there are >50% more species at each Palacio de los Loros quarry than in any comparable U.S. Paleocene sample. These results indicate more vibrant terrestrial ecosystems in Patagonian than in North American floodplain environments ∼4 m.y. after the end-Cretaceous extinction, and they push back the time line 10 m.y. for the evolution of high floral diversity in South America. The cause of the dis parity is unknown but could involve reduced impact effects because of greater distance from the Chicxulub site, higher latest Cretaceous diversity, or faster recovery or immigration rates.