Fossil Record 20(2): 147-157, doi: 10.5194/fr-20-147-2017
Problems related to the taxonomic placement of incompletely preserved amber fossils: transfer of the Paleogene liverwort Cylindrocolea dimorpha (Cephaloziellaceae) to the extant Odontoschisma sect. Iwatsukia (Cephaloziaceae)
expand article infoKathrin Feldberg‡, Jiří Váňa§, Alfons Schäfer-Verwimp|, Michael Krings, Carsten Gröhn#, Alexander R. Schmidt¤, Jochen Heinrichs«†
‡ Department of Biology and GeoBio-Center, Ludwig Maximilian University, Menzinger Straße 67, 80638 Munich, Germany§ Department of Botany, Charles University, Benátská 2, 128 01 Prague 2, Czech Republic| Mittlere Letten 11, 88634 Herdwangen-Schönach, Germany¶ Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften, Paläontologie und Geobiologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, and SNSB-Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, Richard-Wagner-Straße 10, 80333 Munich, Germany# Amber Study Group, c/o Geological-Palaeontological Museum of the University of Hamburg, Bundesstraße 55, 20146 Hamburg, Germany¤ Department of Geobiology, Georg August University, Goldschmidtstraße 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany« Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Münchenen, München, Germany
† Deceased author
© Kathrin Feldberg, Jiří Váňa, Alfons Schäfer-Verwimp, Michael Krings, Carsten Gröhn, Alexander R. Schmidt, Jochen Heinrichs.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Feldberg K, Váňa J, Schäfer-Verwimp A, Krings M, Gröhn C, Schmidt AR, Heinrichs J (2017) Problems related to the taxonomic placement of incompletely preserved amber fossils: transfer of the Paleogene liverwort Cylindrocolea dimorpha (Cephaloziellaceae) to the extant Odontoschisma sect. Iwatsukia (Cephaloziaceae). Fossil Record 20(2): 147-157. https://doi.org/10.5194/fr-20-147-2017
Open Access
Abstract
A revision of the Baltic and Bitterfeld amber fossilsassigned to Cylindrocolea dimorpha (Cephaloziellaceae) has yielded evidence of the presence ofmulticellular, bifid underleaves, which have not previously been reportedfor this species and conflict with the current circumscription of thefamily. We transfer the fossil species to Odontoschisma (sect. Iwatsukia) and propose the newcombination O. dimorpha of the Cephaloziaceae. Characteristics of the fossil include anoverall small size of the plant, entire-margined, bifid leaves andunderleaves, more or less equally thickened leaf cell walls, ventralbranching that includes stoloniform branches with reduced leaves, and thelack of a stem hyalodermis and gemmae. Placement of the fossil inCephaloziaceae profoundly affects divergence time estimates for liverwortsbased on DNA sequence variation with integrated information from the fossilrecord. Our reclassification concurs with hypotheses on the divergence timesof Cephaloziaceae derived from DNA sequence data that provide evidence of alate Early Cretaceous to early Eocene age of the Odontoschisma crown group and an originof O. sect. Iwatsukia in the Late Cretaceous to Oligocene.