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Science 27 February 1976:
Vol. 191. no. 4229, pp. 854 - 856
DOI: 10.1126/science.191.4229.854
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Articles

Reproductive and Vegetative Morphology of a Cretaceous Angiosperm

DAVID L. DILCHER 1, WILLIAM L. CREPET 1, CHARLES D. BEEKER 1, and HOWARD C. REYNOLDS 2

1 Department of Plant Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington 47401
2 Division of Biological Sciences, Fort Hays Kansas State College, Hays 67601

Recent collections from plant-bearing deposits of Cenomanian age in central Kansas have yielded angiosperm axes with helically arranged, seed-bearing, conduplicate carpels. Large leaves associated with these fruits are thought to represent parts of the same kind of plant because the leaves and fruits are the only plant fossils at this locality to have distinctive, morphologically identical, yellow bodies within their carbonaceous remains. These fossils provide a rare opportunity to study the morphology of an ancient angiosperm and illustrate the antiquity of certain features considered primitive by comparative angiosperm morphologists.

Submitted on October 20, 1975


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