Abstract
OBSERVATIONS were made on plausibly-coniferous fossil shoots in silicified floras from arid southern central Australia. Such floras are found in an indurated siliceous matrix superficially resembling silcrete1, but occurring as eroded stones on various landsurfaces. The fossils, loosely oriented according to apparent bedding planes, are undistorted natural moulds of very high fidelity, often carrying details of surface morphology down to the microscopic dimensions of cell outline. They are not well expressed on fresh fracture faces, but only on weathered faces, by differential erosion. Of the plant debris fossilized within the matrix, one might expect the array presented at the surface of the eroded stony fragments to be dictated by chance, at the vagaries of erosion and weathering. However, the particular kind of fragment (branched or not, terminal or not, etc.) was found to be correlated with the architecture (and hence with the systematic status) of the shoot, despite fragmentation.
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References
Jessup, R. W., J. Soil Sci., 12, 199 (1961).
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LANGE, R., OFFLER, C. Correlations between the Architecture of Shoots and the Particular Fragments of them found as Fossils. Nature 207, 435 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/207435a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/207435a0
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