The study reveals the ecological distribution of the precursor plants of coal formation ( Sigillaria brardii species) in the Pyrenees regarding a global climate change.
The study reveals the ecological distribution of the precursor plants of coal formation ( Sigillaria brardii species) in the Pyrenees regarding a global climate change. A study reveals how the Sigillaria brardii species —a fossil plant typical of peatlands and abundant in the flora of Europe and North America during the Upper Carboniferous— colonised new areas in the riverbeds of the great European mountain range known as the Variscan mountains, far from their natural habitat. This process of ecological dispersal of the species had only been documented in the coastal sedimentary basins —known as paralics — in the United States and northern Europe. Now, the study, published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology , describes for the first time the S. brardii' s colonisation phenomenon in the freshwater swamps in the Variscan mountain range, an ancient geological structure in Europe —now eroded— which still presents geological outcrops in the Pyrenees and the Catalan coastal mountain chains. The article, which expands the knowledge about the characteristics of forest ecosystems in the late Carboniferous period, is signed by the experts Aixa Tosal, Joaquim Pàmies and Carles Martín-Closas, from the Department of Earth and Ocean Dynamics of the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute ( IRBio ) of the University of Barcelona. The carboniferous flora in the Catalan Pyrenees The team carried out sedimentological, taphonomic and palaeoecological analyses in the Erillcastell basin, on the southern area of the Catalan Pyernees, a geological area of great scientific interest for studying the creation process of the Pyrenean carboniferous basins.
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