Charcoals collected from the middle-late Pliocene sediments of the Taigu Basin,Shanxi Province,China,have been identified as Ulmus sp.(Ulmaceae),Prunus sp.,Maloidoxylon sp.(Rosaceae),and Maclura sp.(Moraceae).These taxa,along with the previously known fossils,indicate the occurrence of temperate climate and local wildfire at that time.Charcoals of trees and/or shrubs and the morphological changes of these charcoals demonstrate that crown fires and surface fires occurred in the Taigu Basin during the middle-late Pliocene.
This paper describes the fossil fruits of Scirpus weichangensis X.Q.Liang,sp.nov.from the early Miocene of Guangyongfa Village,Weichang County,Hebei Province,North China.The fossil fruits are obovate in shape and their lateral sections are plumply trigonous.The cell walls of the surface are straight.The persistent stout bristles have downward-directed barbellae in distal 1/2.The occurrence of the fossil Scirpus indicates that Guangfayong was a wetland in the early Miocene.Based on the fossil data,the genus likely originated in Western Siberia in the Oligocene,spread during the Miocene,and was finally distributed worldwide in the Holocene.
Ping LuYa LiJian-Wei ZhangXiao-Qing LiangYue-Zhuo LiCheng-Sen Li
Spirematospermum is a well-known extinct zingiberalean taxon, characterized by trilocular capsules containing many distinctive, spirally striate and arillate seeds. It is frequently found and studied in European Neogene carpological floras, but is scarcely represented in East Asia floras. In this work we recognize a new fossil record of Spirematospermum wetzleri（Heer） Chandler based on the capsules and seeds from the Miocene of Weichang, Hebei Province, North China. These fossils represent the first record of the species in the Miocene of China. Fossil data indicate that Spirematospermum probably originated in the Late Cretaceous of North America or Central Europe.The genus still existed in the Paleocene of North America, but became extinct after that time. However, the genus successively survived in Europe from the Eocene to Pliocene, and flourished luxuriantly during the Oligocene to Miocene. As there was Turgai Strait between Europe and Asia during the Eocene, the genus did not spread to Central Asia and West Siberia until the strait closed in the late Eocene/early Oligocene, and further expanded eastwardly to eastern Siberia, Russia, northern China and central Japan during the Miocene, but became extinct in Asia after the Miocene. The genus contracted its distribution to Europe in the Pliocene, and afterwards it became extinct in the world.
