Early Cretaceous Keteleerioxylon Wood in the Songliao Basin, Northeast China, and Its Geographic and Environmental Implications

Abstract

The extant Keteleeria is endemic to east and southeast Asia, while Keteleeria-like trees were widely distributed in the northern hemisphere in Earth’s history. In this paper, we reported a novel wood fossil of Keteleerioxylon changchunense Shi, Sun, Meng et Yu sp. nov., collected from the middle part of the Yingcheng Formation, Yingcheng Coal Mine, Changchun City, Jilin Province, northeast China. The quantitative growth-ring analyses of K. changchunense indicate that it was evergreen with a leaf longevity of 1–3 years, which is consistent with the foliar retention of extant Keteleeria. Its high ring-markedness index (RMI) indicates that the climate seasonality was pronounced during the Early Albian period in the Songliao Basin, northeast China. The fossil records of Keteleeria and closely related taxa indicate that this group might have originated from high latitudes in the northern hemisphere, then spread and migrated southward during the Late Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, gradually decreased in the Cenozoic period, and so far only survives in east and southeast Asia.

A late Eocene wood assemblage from the Crooked River Basin, Oregon, USA

“…distinctive seeds are known from the Eocene and Oligocene of North America (Meyer andManchester 1997, Manchester et al 2009), as well as the Oligocene-Miocene of Europe (Manchester et al 2009). Shi et al (2022) reviewed the record of fossil woods resembling Keteleeria and described a new species Keteleerioxylon changchunense Shi, Sun, Meng et Yu (2022) from the early Cretaceous of China. There are three other reports of Keteleerioxylon I.A.…”