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Middle Miocene fossil grasses from Fort Ternan, Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2016

Daniel P. Dugas  and
Gregory J. Retallack
Daniel P. Dugas
Affiliation:
Departments of Geography and Geological Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene 97403
Gregory J. Retallack
Affiliation:
Departments of Geography and Geological Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene 97403
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Abstract

At the well-known fossil mammal locality of Fort Ternan in southwestern Kenya, radiometrically dated at about 14 million years old (middle Miocene), fossil grasses have been preserved by nephelinitic sandstone in place of growth above a brown paleosol (type Onuria clay). Large portions of grass plants as well as fragments of leaves have revealed details of silica bodies, stomates, and other taxonomically important features under the scanning electron microscope. The computer database for grass identification compiled by Leslie Watson and colleagues was used to determine the most similar living grass genera to the five distinct kinds of fossil found. Two of the fossil species are assigned to Cleistochloa kabuyis sp. nov. and C. shipmanae sp. nov. This genus includes one species from low fertility dry woodland soils of New South Wales and Queensland and a second species from “raw clay soils” in western New Guinea. A third fossil species, represented by a large portion of a branching culm, is assigned to Stereochlaena miocenica sp. nov. This genus includes five species of low-fertility woodland soils in southeastern Africa. Both Cleistochloa and Stereochlaena are in the supertribe Panicanae of the subfamily Panicoideae. A fourth species is assigned to Distichlis africana sp. nov. and provides a biogeographic link between the single species of this genus now living in coastal grasslands in southeastern Australia and the 12 species of dunes and deserts found throughout the Americas from Patagonia and the West Indies to the United States and Canada. A fifth species is, like D. africana, in the subfamily Chloridoideae, but its stomata were not seen and it could belong to Cyclostachya, Pogoneura, or Polevansia. This earliest known wooded grassland flora in Africa is taxonomically unlike the modern grass flora of fertile volcanic African landscapes, and may have been recruited from an archaic grass flora of Gondwanan desert and lateritic soils.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , January 1993 , pp. 113 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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