Fossil dicotyledonous woods from Deccan Intertrappean sediments of Ghansor, Seoni District, Madhya Pradesh, India

Abstract

Anatomical details of three well preserved dicotyledonous woods resembling extant genera, viz. Dracontomelon Bl. (syn. Dracontomelum Bl.) of the family Anacardiaceae, Elaeocarpus Linn. of the Elaeocarpaceae, Euphoria Comm. ex Juss. - Litchi chinensis Sonn. - Otonephalium Radlk. (anatomically indistinguishable) of the Sapindaceae have been described from the Deccan Intertrappean sediments of Ghansor, Seoni District, Madhya Pradesh. The assemblage indicates occurrence of thick tropical vegetation at the time of deposition. These genera are presently found in natural association and are distributed in tropical wet-evergreen forests of Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Assam, Sikkim, Bangladesh and Myanmar etc. Their presence signifies that the climate was tropical with plenty of rainfall during the period of deposition.

Coryphoid palms from the K-Pg boundary of central India and their biogeographical implications: Evidence from megafossil remains

“…Thus, the discovery of present and previously reported coryphoid palm megafossils of different organs, namely, leaves ( Srivastava et al., 2014 ; Roy et al., 2021 ), petioles ( Trivedi and Verma, 1981 ), leaf bases ( Bonde et al., 2000 ), stems ( Mahabale, 1958 ; Lakhanpal et al., 1979 ; Ambwani, 1983 ; Ambwani and Mehrotra, 1989 ; Gayakwad and Patil, 1989 ; Bonde et al., 2008 ; Khan et al., 2020a ) and fruits ( Bande et al., 1982 ) is generally taken to indicate a warm and humid tropical climate prevailed across what is now Madhya Pradesh, central India, during Late Cretaceous-early Paleocene times. This suggested paleoclimatic condition is also supported by earlier published qualitative paleoclimatic reconstruction using nearest living relatives (NLR) analysis ( Srivastava, 2010 ; Prasad et al., 2013 ; Srivastava and Srivastava, 2014 ; Manchester et al., 2016 ; Baas et al., 2017 ; Kapgate et al., 2017 ; Khan et al., 2019 ; Smith et al., 2021 ) and quantitative paleoclimatic data using Climate Leaf Analysis Multivariate Program (CLAMP) analysis ( Bhatia et al., 2021 ). The CLAMP-derived results based on physiognomic features of woody dicot fossil leaf assemblages of the same fossil locality predict a mean annual temperature of 23.4 °C ± 2.3 °C; a cold month mean temperature of 17.2 °C ± 3.5 °C, a warm month mean temperature of 28.1 °C ± 2.9 °C, a relative humidity of 75.6% ± 10.1% and a growing season precipitation of 2320 mm ± 643 mm during Late Cretaceous-early Paleocene time ( Bhatia et al., 2021 ).…”

The earliest fossil evidence of spiny feather (pinnate-leaved) palms from the K-Pg of Gondwana

“…It is interesting to note that palms have been recognized as an important component of this flora, represented by numerous permineralized stems of Palmoxylon (Prakash and Ambwani, 1980;Ambwani, 1984a, b;Manchester et al, 2016;Khan et al, 2019Khan et al, , 2020a, fruits (Prakash, 1960;Bande et al, 1982;Mehrotra, 1987;Bonde, 1990;Manchester et al, 2016;Matsunaga et al, 2019) as well as several species of leaf remains (Sahni 1964;Bonde, 1986;Roy et al, 2021;Kumar et al, 2022a). In addition to palm woods, other abundant plant megafossils reported from the Deccan Traps are silicified dicot woods (Lakhanpal et al, 1979;Bande and Khatri, 1980;Prakash, 1980, 1983;Bande et al, 1986;Mehrotra, 1989;Srivastava, 2010;Baas et al, 2017), and a few dicot leaf fossils (Prasad et al, 2013: Khan et al, 2020c.…”