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New perspectives on the Mesozoic seed fern order Corystospermales based on attached organs from the Triassic of Antarctica¹

² Department of Biological Sciences, LSCB 124, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama 36688 USA; ³ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Natural History Museum and ⁴ Biodiversity Research Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045 USA; and ⁵ Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio, 9100 Trelew, Chubut, Argentina

ABSTRACT

A new Triassic corystosperm is described from the Shackleton Glacier region of Antarctica. The compression fossils include cupulate organs (Umkomasia uniramia) and leaves (Dicroidium odontopteroides) attached to short shoot-bearing branches. The cupulate organs occur in groups near the apices of the short shoots, and each consists of a single axis with a pair of bracts and a subapical whorl of five to eight ovoid cupules. This unique architecture indicates that the cupules are individual megasporophylls rather than leaflets of a compound megasporophyll. A branch bearing an attached D. odontopteroides leaf provides the first unequivocal evidence that Umkomasia cupulate organs and Dicroidium leaves were produced by the same plants. Although this had previously been assumed based on organ associations, the new specimens are important in demonstrating that a single species of corystosperm produced the unique cupulate organs described here and the geographically and stratigraphically widespread and common D. odontopteroides leaf. Therefore, biostratigraphic, paleoecological, and phylogenetic studies that treat Dicroidium leaf morphospecies as proxies for biological species of entire plants should be reconsidered. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the corystosperm cupule is an unlikely homologue for the angiosperm carpel or outer integument.

Key Words: Antarctica • Corystospermales • Dicroidium • Gondwana • Mesozoic • pteridosperms • Triassic • Umkomasia

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