Botanical Literature Details

• Author(s)

  Muller, Jan

• Article or Chapter Title

  Fossil pollen records of extant angiosperms

• Year

  1981

• Journal or Book

  Botanical Review 47(1): 1-142

• Notes

  ENGLISH ABSTRACT
  
  The fossil record for angiosperm pollen types which are comparable to recent taxa is evaluated, following a similar survey published in 1970. Special attention is paid to the dating of the sediments. Evidence for 139 families is considered to be reliable, for others the records are cited as provisional, pending the accumulation of more evidence. Some published records are shown to be erroneous. In the early Cretaceous only types occur indicating the presence of plants ancestral to Magnoliidae and Liliatae. In the Turonian increased differentiation is evident, culminating in the Maestrichtian when evidence for the presence of most major taxa of angiosperms is available. In the Tertiary diversification at lower taxonomic level continues and identification with living taxa becomes more certain. Herbaceous groups tend to appear later in the record than woody ones.
  
  KEYWORDS = Lecythidaceae, fossils, pollen.
  
  Note: Lecythidaceae is treated on page 64. See multimedia for the part of this paper dealing with Lecythidaceae.