Discovery of 300-million-year-old fossil reveals a new plant species in the Buçaco Basin
O fóssil corresponde a um cone (estróbilo) masculino de uma gimnospérmica da já extinta ordem das Cordaitales. A descoberta permite saber como estas plantas se reproduziam.
A research team from the Department of Earth Sciences (DCT) of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC) discovered the fossil of a new plant species estimated to be 300 million years old in the Buçaco Basin.
The new species, presented in a scientific paper to be published in September in the Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, belongs to the Cordaitales family, a primitive group of present-day gymnosperms, and has been named Florinanthus bussacensis. This fossil corresponds to a male cone (strobilus) of a gymnosperm of the now extinct order Cordaitales. The discovery provides insight into how these plants reproduced.
According to Pedro Correia, professor at DCT and researcher at the Centre for Geosciences of the University of Coimbra, “The results obtained so far provide a better insight into the floral richness and diversity that once existed in the Buçaco Basin, as well as the environmental and climatic conditions to which these floras were exposed, in an intramontane area, after the transition from a wet to a dry climate that occurred during the Kasimovian-Gzhelian interval".
According to the palaeontologist, the discovery of this new fossil "also allows us to better understand the variability of the morphological and ontogenetic characteristics of Cordaitales. Due to the difficulty of preserving and recognising these reproductive structures, the diversity of this group of plants is still poorly known", explains the expert.
"The main difficulty in working with plant fossils is to link the different fossilised parts of these plants and establish a kinship relationship. Most of the remains of these floras preserved in the fossil record consist of leaves, stems, roots and seeds," he concludes.
The FCTUC research team is currently working with Brazilian experts on a new palaeobotanical study of the Buçaco Carboniferous.
The scientific article "Florinanthus bussacensis sp. nov., a new cordaitalean cone from the Upper Pennsylvanian of Portugal", had the collaboration of palaeontologist Sofia Pereira, from the Centre for Geosciences and experts Zbynĕk Šimůnek (Czech Geological Survey, Czech Republic) and Christopher Cleal (University of Bristol, UK).
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Original news article in Portuguese: Sara Machado | FCTUC
English version: Diana Taborda
