Fagaceae pollen from the early Cenozoic of West Greenland: revisiting Engler's and Chaney's Arcto-Tertiary hypotheses
- Author(s)
- Fridgeir Grimsson, Reinhard Zetter, Guido W. Grimm, Gunver Krarup Pedersen, Asger Ken Pedersen, Thomas Denk
- Abstract
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 midlatitude 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.- Organisation(s)
- Department of Palaeontology
- External organisation(s)
- Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Natural History Museum of Denmark, Swedish Museum of Natural History
- Journal
- Plant Systematics and Evolution
- Volume
- 301
- Pages
- 809-832
- No. of pages
- 24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-014-1118-5
- Publication date
- 2015
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 105117 Palaeobotany
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/fagaceae-pollen-from-the-early-cenozoic-of-west-greenland-revisiting-englers-and-chaneys-arctotertiary-hypotheses(068c22a0-fd10-41f8-b74e-697835075415).html