Plant fossils from the Wealden facies (Lower Cretaceous, Berriasian) of Tecklenburg, Westphalia, Germany

摘要

While the Early Cretaceous flora of the English Wealden has been extensively revised in the last decades, the flora from the German Wealden is still in need of thorough revision. One major account on a flora from Duingen in the eastern Lower Saxony Basin (Niedersaehsisches Becken) has been published a couple of years ago, but was covering freshly collected fossil material only. Here, a small flora from the southern margin of the Lower Saxony Basin is reported coming from Brochterbeck, a district of Tecklenburg, at the northern slopes of the Teutoburger Wald mountain range in Westphalia, Germany. The flora shows a slightly different composition compared to those of the 'classical' German Wealden: it is also characterised by remains of several delicate filmy ferns and cupressoid (taxodiaceous) conifers, but it is dominated by the presence of leaves of Nilssonia schaumburgensis, while other cycadophytes such as cycads and bennettites are entirely absent. One leaf reminiscent of a Ginkgo species was found as well. The relatively fine-grained sandstones of the rocks comprising the flora at Brochterbeck reflect a terrestrial deposit of the Wealden facies, which was deposited under deltaic freshwater conditions in brackish-limnic conditions in a humid, subtropical climate.