A new species of conifer wood Brachyoxylon from the Cretaceous of Eastern China and its paleoclimate significance

ABSTRACT

A new species of conifer wood, Brachyoxylon zhoui sp. nov., is described from the Lower Cretaceous Guantou Formation of Zhejiang Province, eastern China. The new species is characterised by a mixed type of radial tracheary pitting, araucarioid cross-field pitting, high uniseriate rays, and the occurrence of traumatic resin canals. The new finding represents the second species of Brachyoxylon from the Guantou Formation and it contributes to the further understanding of the forest composition of the Early Cretaceous flora in eastern China.The quantitative analysis of growth ring anatomy indicates that the forest composition was evergreen with a Leaf Retention Time (LRT) of 3–15 years. It is deduced that the Zhejiang Province was dominated by a subtropical to tropical and relatively semiarid climate during the Early Cretaceous.

KEYWORDS:

• Conifer wood
• early Cretaceous
• eastern China
• palaeoclimate
• Brachyoxylon

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Prof. Zheng Shaolin, Zhang Wu from Shenyang Center, China Geological Survey and Prof. Shi Xiao from Jilin University for their suggestions regarding the manuscript. We also express our gratitude to the reviewers who improved this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (Grant Nos 41772023, 41790454, 41688103, 41402004 and 41302004), the Strategic Priority Program (B) of CAS (XDB 18000000 and 2600000), the State Key Program for Basic Research & Development of Ministry of Science & Technology of China (2016YSC0600406) and the State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy (Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, CAS) (Grant No. 173113).