Megaspores of the West mains farm borehole, tournaisian, England

Reeves, Emma J (2015) Megaspores of the West mains farm borehole, tournaisian, England. In CIMP Meeting 2015, Bergen 2015, Abstract Book Sept. 17.-18.2015. p. 35 .

Abstract

Following the end Devonian Mass Extinction event, tetrapods seemed to disappear from the fossil record for a significant time interval (Romer's Gap). However, many have been discovered within intact ecosystems from a number of Tournaisian localities in Nova Scotia, Canada and in the Scottish Borders, UK. These tetrapods, and associated environments, are now being studied by the NERC funded TW:eed Project.

The UK tetrapod sites are from a number of scattered localities in the poorly exposed Ballagan Formation. In an attempt to tie these localities together stratigraphically, the Ballagan Formation has been cored (501.33 m) in the West Mains Farm borehole at Norham, just inside the England border. This is a preliminary account of the megaspores from the borehole. Although megaspores are well known from a number of localities in the region, this is the first time they can be studied stratigraphically within a continuous section.

After standard palynological processing, megaspores were hand-picked from the >150 μm fraction. The distribution of the megaspores through the Ballagan Formation shows that they occur in discrete zones that highlights an episodic return to a lycopod forested landscape. Abundant Didymosporites scottii megaspores together with rarer lycopods (Setosisporites sp.) support an environmental reconstruction of a low-level vegetation of the fern Stauropteris with higher, most distant lycopods.

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