Vegetation and climate of the New Zealand Jurassic

Abstract

New Zealand's Jurassic plant fossils are known from non-marine settings in two terranes: the Murihiku forearc basin and from a small area on the Rakaia Terrane, an accretionary prism. These terranes lay in relatively high latitudes along the Gondwana margin but their precise location, latitude and position with respect to each other is unclear. The flora was dominated by conifers, ferns, bennettitaleans, pentoxylaleans and locally equisetaleans, but it is relatively depauperate, perhaps reflecting a high latitude position. Most climate indicators suggest a warm temperate climate with rainfall that was not especially high and that might have been seasonal at times. Revision of the New Zealand Jurassic flora is overdue, and while new genera may be discovered, species numbers may well decrease.

Palynology of Jurassic (Bathonian) sediments from Donbas, northeast Ukraine

“…Perhaps most significantly, groups such as the Cycadales, ginkgophytes, and Bennettitales are generally well represented in macrofloral records from the Jurassic (e.g. Spicer and Hill 1979;Pole 2001Pole , 2009Popa 2014;Pott and McLoughlin 2014;Vajda et al 2017;McLoughlin et al 2018, this issue). However, such groups typically produce simple monosulcate pollen (e.g.…”

The common in-group identity model enhances communication about recycled water

“…Tithonian (Parris et al, 1995;Pole, 2009), it is not clear that the sediments at Bartrum's (1921) collection site can be chronocorrelated as implied by Parris et al (1995); however, as this site appears to be within the Murihiku Terrane, a Late Jurassic age seems probable. Bartrum's (1921) specimen was figured by Edwards (1934); this indifferently preserved specimen shows bilateral symmetry of sporophylls, but the adaxial processes are indistinct.…”

“…All these southern New Zealand sites are within the Murihiku Terrane (Pole, 2009); see The Palissya bartrumii material is poorly preserved and only the holotype can be regarded as approaching completeness. These specimens are very similar to those referred to P. ovalis from the Middle Jurassic of southeast Queensland (discussed above), except that P.…”

Early Jurassic climate and atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> concentration in the Sichuan paleobasin, Southwest China

“…Though the climate events in the Early Jurassic epoch are largely based on the marine sedimentary and geochemical records, data from the terrestrial realm provide important details of environmental change (e.g., Hesselbo et al, 2000;Suan et al, 2010;Jenkyns, 2010;Philippe et al, 2017). Terrestrial proxies, such as flora (e.g., Riding et al, 2013;Deng et al, 2017;Philippe et al, 2017;Ros-Franch et al, 2019), vegetation (Pole, 2009), and geochemistry (e.g., Riding et al, 2013;Kenny, 2015;Tramoy et al, 2016) have begun to provide important information of the Mesozoic-Cenzoic climate and environmental changes on continents. Particularly, a negative feedback in the global exogenic carbon cycle, from carbon isotopes of lacustrine organic matter, has been hypothesized to account for the Toarcian oceanic anoxic event (Xu et al, 2017), opening a new avenue to link marine and terrestrial climate in the Early Jurassic.…”