New palaeobotanical data from the Lower Devonian of Mezquita de Loscos (Teruel Province, Spain)

Abstract

Recent fieldwork has uncovered three new localities from the Lower Devonian of Mezquita de Loscos (Teruel Province, Spain) with further plant mega-fossils and the first record of micro-fossils. Such plant remains have been interpreted as belonging to a basal euphyllophyte, Taeniocrada-like stems, Hostinella genus and paired sporangia. Fourteen spore taxa were recovered, including Ambitisporites, Aneurospora, Brochotriletes, Chelinospora, Emphanisporites, Gneudnaspora and Retusotriletres, among others. New evidence confirms a Lochkovian age for this outcrop and suggests that the plant diversity was more complex than originally documented.

Keywords::

• early tracheophytes
• Iberian Peninsula
• Lochkovian
• plant fossils
• spore diversity

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Government of Aragón region (Spain) for permissions to conduct fieldworks (046/2012 file of the Diputación General de Aragón). The authors also thank Enrique Villas (University of Zaragoza, Spain) for his comments about the determinations of faunal elements and corresponding stratigraphical and lithological data of the geological formations. The authors are grateful to Brigitte Meyer-Berthaud, Philippe Gerrienne and Jean Galtier for providing a helpful discussion on the assemblages. The authors thank Emil A. Cherrington for the language review. The authors also thank students of Mining Engineering and Marine Biology from the University of Vigo for their support during the fieldwork. The reviewers' comments helped considerably to improve the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

B.C.-M acknowledges the financial support provided by Project ANR-2010-BLAN-607-02 ‘TERRES’. J.-Z.X is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41272018).