Abstract

Two genera and three species of definite fossil angiosperm wood have been identified from the diverse flora of the Lower Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation of Utah for the first time. Well preserved fossil dicotyledonous woods have been found in association with the fern Tempskya and conifer woods at two sites, one east of Castle Dale, Utah 1 and one east of Ferron, Utah. Petrified logs were collected from a horizon between ten and thirty feet below the overlying Dakota Sandstone at the Castle Dale site. Dakota Sandstone is missing at the Ferron site, but the wood occurs on the surface of yellow conglomeratic sandstone channel fills in the Cedar Mountain Formation. These angiosperm woods are of great interest because very few early Cretaceous angiosperm woods have been reported from the Western United States, and since the Cretaceous is the assumed time of the origin of angiosperms, a taxonomic study of early Cretaceous angiosperm wood expands our knowledge of this taxa.

Degree

MS

College and Department

Life Sciences; Plant and Wildlife Sciences

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

1973-07-26

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/Letd479

Keywords

Dicotlyledons, Fossil; Paleontology, Utah

Language

English

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