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Stigmaria Brongniart: a new specimen from Duckmantian (Lower Pennsylvanian) Brymbo (Wrexham, North Wales) together with a review of known casts and how they were preserved

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2015

BARRY A. THOMAS  and
LEYLA J. SEYFULLAH
BARRY A. THOMAS*
Affiliation:
Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3DA, UK
LEYLA J. SEYFULLAH
Affiliation:
Department of Geobiology, Georg-August Universität Göttingen, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
*
†Author for correspondence: bat@aber.ac.uk
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Abstract

Stigmaria is one of the iconic plant fossils of the Carboniferous and fragments of the narrower parts of the rhizomorph are found in most museum collections. However, very few almost entire specimens have been found and preserved. A new specimen of Stigmaria from Brymbo, North Wales is described and compared with other preserved examples from Europe and North America. The Brymbo specimen shows a large portion of trunk still attached to the large stigmarian base, which is a rare find, and this specimen supports our ideas of how these impressively large casts were formed. Stigmarias were preserved by the deposition of minerals around them following a sediment inundation, which gave sufficient support while the tissues rotted and filled with sediments. Remnants of the outer tissues were compressed to form a thin surrounding coal layer.

Keywords

Carboniferouslycophytespreservationrhizomorph
Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 152 , Issue 5 , September 2015 , pp. 858 - 870
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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