Leefructus
| Leefructus | ||||||||||
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||
| Lower Cretaceous ( Aptium ) | ||||||||||
| 125.8 to 122.6 million years | ||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Leefructus | ||||||||||
| Sun et al. 2011 | ||||||||||
| species | ||||||||||
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Leefructus is an extinct genus of plants from the family of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae), before about 125 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous in China occurred. The only species of the genusdescribed so faris Leefructus mirus .
Naming
Leefructus is an artificial word . The name of the genus honors Shiming Li from Shenyang and refers to the Latin fructus "fruit". Epithet of the only scientifically described species so far, Leefructus mirus , means “wonderful” in Latin. Leefructus mirus therefore means “wonderful Li fruit”.
The holotype (archive no. PISNU-0701) is kept in the Paleontological Institute of Shenyang Normal University in Shenyang.
features
According to the first description of the genus and type species Leefructus mirus , an early representative of the eudicotyledons , impressions of a 16 cm long shoot with two nodes and six leaves preserved in situ as well as a fruit also attached to the shoot in yellowish-gray siltstone have been preserved ; organic matter has not been handed down. The long-stemmed leaves, three-fold deeply lobed and multiply indented, are grouped helically in threes and fours at the node; they are 35 to 40 mm long and 15 to 22 mm wide. The fruit is 6 mm long and 4 mm wide and is described as "pseudo-synkarp".
The site of Leefructus is 15 kilometers south of Lingyuan the village Dawangzhangzi. The find was discovered in a layer of the Yixian Formation known as the Daxinfangzi Bed .
Web links
- Fossil is best look yet at an ancestor of buttercups. With an illustration of the type specimen of Leefructus mirus from the first description in Nature . On: eurekalert.org of March 31, 2011
- Reconstruction of the appearance of Leefructus mirus from the first description. On: nature.com from March 31, 2011
- Reconstruction of the leaf veins and the leaf outline of Leefructus mirus from the first description. On: nature.com from March 31, 2011
Individual evidence
- ^ Ge Sun, David L. Dilcher, Hongshan Wang, and Zhiduan Chen: A eudicot from the Early Cretaceous of China. In: Nature , Volume 471, No. 7340, 2011, pp. 625-628, doi : 10.1038 / nature09811