Publications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Detection of in situ resinous traces in Jurassic conifers from floras lacking amber
Department of Palaeontology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Department of Palaeontology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria & Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship, Montclair, NJ, USA.
Swedish Museum of Natural History, Department of Paleobiology.
Swedish Museum of Natural History, Department of Paleobiology.
Show others and affiliations
2024 (English)In: Fossil Imprint, ISSN 2533-4050, Vol. 80, no 1, p. 68-76Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Amber deposits are rare in Jurassic successions, occurring in small quantities, whereas Lower Cretaceous strata host many substantial and commonly fossiliferous amber deposits worldwide. Minor amounts of Early Jurassic amber have been reported from Italy, and small amounts of Late Jurassic amber are known from Lebanon, Jordan and Thailand. Other Jurassic amber deposits that require reinvestigation of their age and provenance have also been reported from Denmark and France. Few of these amber deposits contain fossils, the others lack inclusions, suggesting a ‘Jurassic amber gap’ in the fossil record. Here, we surveyed fossil plant collections held at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, for amber and amber producing plants from Jurassic floras. We focused on the collection of plants from Shaanxi, China and the Middle Jurassic floras of Iran and Afghanistan from the H.-J. Schweitzer collection. Using a hand-held UV light microscope, we scanned the collections for resinous remains as ambers can show autofluorescence with UV light, but found no dispersed amber fragments or droplets. Some researchers refer to fossilized resin within plant tissues under that name to differentiate it from exuded resins preserved as amber, and we follow this convention. We identified a conifer fragment of Elatocladus sp. from China with in situ rods of resin preserved in the leaves and a unique conifer twig (Elatides sp.) from Afghanistan with tiny linear resin traces in leaves that were only visible via autofluorescence with UV light. These resinous traces likely define the former position of resin canals in the leaves, but the resin is not preserved as in situ rods. Instead, it has impregnated the coalified mesophyll, likely during fossilization, to form thin lines (chemical ‘ghosts’ of preserved resin) within the conifer leaf remains.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Prague, 2024. Vol. 80, no 1, p. 68-76
Keywords [en]
Afghanistan, autofluorescence, Cheirolepidiaceae, China, Cupressaceae, Elatides, Elatocladus, fluorescence, Jurassic amber gap, resin, UV light
National Category
Other Earth Sciences
Research subject
The changing Earth; Ecosystems and species history
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:nrm:diva-5693DOI: 10.37520/fi.2024.007OAI: oai:DiVA.org:nrm-5693DiVA, id: diva2:1915508
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2016-04905Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, KAW-2020.0145Swedish Research Council, 2019-4061Swedish Research Council, 2022-03920
Note

The research visit of MC and LJS to the Swedish Museum of Natural History (NRM)and support for MS was funded by the Swedish ResearchCouncil (VR), grant number NT7-2016 04905 to MS. MChas further been supported by a Lise Meitner fellowshipfrom the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), grant doi: 10.55776/M3168. Funding is also acknowledged from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, KAW-2020.0145 and from the Swedish Research Council VR grants 2019-4061 (toVV) and 2022-03920 (to SM).

Available from: 2024-11-15 Created: 2024-11-22 Last updated: 2025-09-12Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(5604 kB)28 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 5604 kBChecksum SHA-512
b7a918121ee30b2ea4405cbd55439a87d4e0ea6c4ebb1ee7818cb1dde1234fbb13a95503d40b815d581e74d5f539aeaef0b4c3185dc304d6ebd70f753e09f17f
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full texthttps://publikace.nm.cz/en/periodicals/fossil-imprint-acta-musei-nationalis-pragae-series-b-historia-naturalis/80-1/detection-of-in-situ-resinous-traces-in-jurassic-conifers-from-floras-lacking-amber

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Vajda, ViviMcLoughlin, StephenSteinthorsdottir, Margret
By organisation
Department of PaleobiologyDepartment of Bioinformatics and Genetics
Other Earth Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 28 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 667 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf