Palaeogene fossil Populus leaves from Lanzhou Basin and their palaeoclimatic significance  

作　　者：SUN Bainian1,2, YAN Defei1, XIE Sanping1, CONG Peiyun1, XIN Cunlin1 & YUN Fei1 1. Key Laboratory of Western China抯 Environmental Systems of the Ministry of Education, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China 2. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sci-ences, Nanjing 210008, China 

出　　处：《Chinese Science Bulletin》2004年第14期1494-1501,共8页

摘　　要：An angiosperm compression flora is found in Palaeogene from Lanzhou Basin and the cuticular analysis of Populus davidiana Dode in the flora is carefully made. Fur-thermore, the fossil cuticles are compared with the epidermal structures of extant Populus leaves growing in different en-vironments, i.e. moist, semimoist, and semiarid to arid cli-matic regions. The present experiments indicate that mature leaves of P. davidiana show leaf size from big to small, leaf cuticles from thick to thin and anticlinal walls of epidermal cells from faintness to clarity along with the increase of lati-tudes of the plant distributions, the climatic variation from moist to arid, the annual precipitation from more to less and the annual mean temperature from high to low. The fossil P. davidiana differs from the specimens collected from Shandan in semiarid to arid climatic regions but closely resembles the Wushan leaves in a semi-moist climatic area in a lot of fea-tures. In a word, the new research may reflect that the flora lives in a semi-moist climatic environment. The present dis-covery of compression of Paleogene Populus davidiana is of great significance to studying vegetation types, climatic and environmental changes during the primal uplifting of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.An angiosperm compression flora is found in Palaeogene from Lanzhou Basin and the cuticular analysis of Populus davidiana Dode in the flora is carefully made. Fur-thermore, the fossil cuticles are compared with the epidermal structures of extant Populus leaves growing in different en-vironments, i.e. moist, semimoist, and semiarid to arid cli-matic regions. The present experiments indicate that mature leaves of P. davidiana show leaf size from big to small, leaf cuticles from thick to thin and anticlinal walls of epidermal cells from faintness to clarity along with the increase of lati-tudes of the plant distributions, the climatic variation from moist to arid, the annual precipitation from more to less and the annual mean temperature from high to low. The fossil P. davidiana differs from the specimens collected from Shandan in semiarid to arid climatic regions but closely resembles the Wushan leaves in a semi-moist climatic area in a lot of fea-tures. In a word, the new research may reflect that the flora lives in a semi-moist climatic environment. The present dis-covery of compression of Paleogene Populus davidiana is of great significance to studying vegetation types, climatic and environmental changes during the primal uplifting of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

关 键 词：古气候 兰州盆地 山杨 化石角质层 早第三纪 被子植物 

分 类 号：Q914[天文地球—古生物学与地层学]