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Geology topics

S.H. Mamay

Publications and source records attributed to S.H. Mamay.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Late Leonardian plants from West Texas: The youngest Paleozoic plant megafossils in North America

Abundant Permian plant megafossils were discovered in the Del Norte Mountains of Brewster County, Trans-Pecos Texas. The flora is dominated by a new and distinctive type of gigantopteroid leaves. Marine invertebrates are closely associated, and this admixture of continental and marine fossils indicates a deltaic depositional setting, probably on the southern margin of the Permian Basin. Conodonts indicate correlation with the uppermost Leonardian Road Canyon Formation in the Glass Mountains. These are the youngest Paleozoic plant megafossils known in North America; they add an important paleontological element to the classic Permian area of this Continent.

Science

Sandrewia, n. gen., a problematical plant from the Lower Permian of Texas and Kansas

Sandrewia , n. gen., monotypified by S. texana , n. sp., is a plant from Lower Permian beds of north-central Texas and east-central Kansas. It is characterized by stout axes with spirally disposed, laxly inserted, petiolate leaves; the laminae are broadly flabelliform with coarse, open venation. The leaves are reminiscent of the vojnovskyalean Nephropsis , of the Permian Petchora Basin, U.S.S.R., but biologic relationships are only speculative because of limited material. However, leaf characteristics render Sandrewia easily identifiable. Its presently limited stratigraphic range, along with floristic associations, indicates it may be a useful guide fossil and supports the author's beliefs regarding important times and places in Paleozoic plant evolution.

Kansas, Texas

Cycads: Fossil evidence of late Paleozoic origin

Plant fossils from Lower Permian strata of the southwestern United States have been interpreted as cycadalean megasporophylls. They are evidently descended from spermopterid elements of the Pennsylvanian Taeniopteris complex; thus the known fossil history of the cycads is extended from the Late Triassic into the late Paleozoic. Possible implications of the Permian fossils toward evolution of the angiosperm carpel are considered.

southwest United States

Middle Pennsylvanian plant fossils: Problematic occurrence in the Bronx

A possible glacial boulder of undeformed and unmetamorphosed siltstone containing Middle Pennsylvanian plant fossils was recovered from the Bronx. The rock cannot be explained by known geologic relations and suggests the possibility of undetected outliers of Pennsylvanian rocks in the Hudson valley.

New York

A new sphenopsid cone from Iowa

A new Pennsylvanian cone genus (Litostrobus iowensis, n. gen., n. sp.), apparently of sphenophyllalean affinity, is described on the basis of a coal-ball specimen from the Urbandale Mine, Urbandale, Iowa . The cone is small and extremely simple in organization. It consists of superposed whorls of twelve bracts each. The bases of the bracts are fused to form shallow cuplike discs. Six sporangia are produced in each whorl; they are erect, each terminating a short, thick, axillary pedicel. Small spores with highly distinctive ornamentation are present in the sporangia.Comparison with other previously described sphenopsid fructifications reveals morphological differences that warrant recognition of the Urbandale specimen as a new genus.

Iowa