Galeacornea guayaguensis sp. nov., a new elaterate pollen species from the Cretaceous of central-western Argentina

Abstract

Here we present a revision of the elaterate pollen species that belong to the genus Galeacornea. We also describe a new species, Galeacornea guayaguensis sp. nov., from the Early Cretaceous (Albian?) of central-western Argentina. The specimens from this species were retrieved from sediments of the Lagarcito Formation (San Luis Basin) located at the Sierra de Guayaguás ranges in the San Juan province. Galeacornea guayaguensis shares with the other Galeacornea species the shape of the grain and the presence of an annular rim and distal appendages. The ridge-like appendages of G. guayaguensis are similar to those of G. stoveri and G. tarimensis, although they never fuse with the annular rim or with each other at their ends as it respectively occurs in these species. This new pollen species provides further evidence on the morphological variation of elaterate grains and extends the geographical distribution of Galeacornea to southern South America, far beyond the palaeophytogeographic Albian–Cenomanian Elaterates Province of the equatorial region. Finally, we propose a new combination of the species Quantonenpollenites crassatus to Galeacornea crassatus, considering that the morphological features of the former perfectly fit the diagnosis of the genus Galeacornea.

Keywords:

• elaterate pollen grains
• Galeacornea
• Lower Cretaceous
• Lagarcito Formation
• San Luis Basin
• central-western Argentina
• South America

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Carina Hoorn (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Catarina Rydin (Stockholm University, Sweden) for the critical reading of the manuscript; and to two anonymous reviewers for the useful constructive reviews. The authors would like to thank Jianguo Li, Wenben Li, Yiyong Zhang and Lujun Liu (Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China) for kindly providing them with Chinese literature and translation from Chinese. The authors are also grateful to Alejandra Moschetti (IANIGLA/ CCT, Mendoza, Argentina) who assisted in the palynological processing of samples and to Rafael Bottero (IANIGLA/CCT, Mendoza, Argentina), who helped in the preparation of Figures 1 and 2. The Financial support was provided by FONCyT-ANPCyT (Fondo para la Inversión Científica y Tecnológica, Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica, projects PICT 2010-1032 and 2010-1805) and CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, PIP 112 20130100444 CO).