An Introduction to the World's Petrified Wood

About this book

Language: English

Since fossil wood (mostly secondary xylem) specimens usually exhibit limited characters and are preserved separate from other plant organs, it is normally difficult to make detailed and systematic studies of them. Although wood fossils have been reported early in the middle of the 19th Century and from almost everywhere in the world, research in this field has so far been progressing rather slowly. Besides the limitation of character diversity and preservation state as mentioned above, one of the major defects is the difficulty in gathering scattered literature and the lack of systematic and comprehensive publications so far. Most works deal only with wood fossils collected from local strata and areas, except for a few regional and monographic contributions made by some authors, such as Goppert, Krausel, Gothan Boureau, Vogellehler, Philippe, and Bamfort. In addition to the difficulty of accessing access original publications that are from various sources and in different languages, the nomenclatural confusion and invalidation that existed in early works have hindered revision and comparative studies of fossil wood. Only recently has the situation considerably changed with the application of much more efficient methods of communication and circulation, as well as improvement and implementation of an international code of botanical nomenclature.

The present book is partly based on the wood collection of the Fairy Lake Botanical Garden, Guangdong, southwest China. Besides descriptions of the new material, the authors spent more than two years collecting and studying published data in scattered literature on a worldwide scale, and summarized the results in this book. It contains diagnoses, type specimens, photographs or figures, and information of geologic and geographic occurrences of more than two hundred genera described since the 19th Century from the Palaeozoic to Cenozoic of about 70 countries and areas on the six continents, with a special discussion on some problematical and confusable generic names, such as Dadoxylon. It also includes large numbers of references and a brief summary on the history, present status and recent progress of fossil wood research in different parts of the world, and gives a general introduction to the anatomical  structure, formation and depositional environment, and the nomenclature and classification of fossil wood.

Despite the fact that it contains mainly unanalyzed information and data, which are moreover very incomplete and even fragmentary for some countries and areas owing to the inaccessibility of original publications, it is one of the most comprehensive contributions to world fossil wood research so far known to us. It provides abundant basic data for studies of the world's wood fossils, their geologic and geographic distribution patterns, palaeoclimates and palaeoenvironments.

Contents

Preface
Foreword
Editors Words

1 Introduction to fossil wood
   1. 1 Fossilization and depositional environment of fossil wood
   1.2  Anatomical structures of fossil wood
   1.3 On the taxonomy and nomenclature of Dadoxylon, Araucarioxylon and Agathoxylon
   1.4 Distribution map of world fossil wood

2 Fossil wood in Asia
   2.1 Fossil wood in China
   2.2 Fossil Wood in Mongolia
   2.3 Fossil wood on the Korean Peninsula
   2.4 Fossil wood in Japan
   2.5 Fossil wood in India
   2.6 Southeastern Asia

3 Russian fossil woods
  3.1 Research history
  3.2 Map showing the fossil localities
  3.3 Type of genus and species
  3.4 New genera and the diagnosis in this region

4 Fossil wood from Europe
  4.1 Palaeozoic wood from Europe.
  4.2 Mesozoic and Cenozoic Fossil Wood in Western Europe
 
5 Fossil wood from Africa
   5.1 Algeria
   5.2 Cameroon
   5.3 Egypt
   5.4 Ethiopia
   5.5 Kenya
   5.6 Libya
   5.7 Mali
   5.8 Morocco
   5.9 Mozambique
   5.10 Somalia
   5.11 Tanzania
   5.12 Tunisia
   5.13 Mauritania
   5.14I Niger
   5.15 Sudan
   5 16 Chad
   5.17 South Afrrica
   5.18 Middle Africa
   5.19 Namibia
   5.20 Botswana
   5.21Madagascar
 
6 Oceania
   6.1 Australia
   6.2 New Caledonia
   6.3 New Zealand

7 Fossil wood from America
   7.1 Palaeozoic wood from America
   7.2 Mesozoic and Cenozoic Fossil wood in America

8 Antarctica
   8.1 Research history
   8.2 Map showing the fossil localities
   8.3 Types of genera and species
   8.4 New genera and their diagnoses in this region

9 Supplement: New Maaterial
   9.1 ntroduction
   9.2 Type species
   9.3 Diagnoses and figures of the negenera

10 Index
References

Customer Reviews