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A new species of Carpinus (Betulaceae) from the Pliocene of Yunnan Province, China

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Abstract

Macrofossils of Carpinus have been widely reported from the Cenozoic of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the leaf cuticules of the genus have rarely been described. A new species, named Carpinus tengchongensis Dai et B.N. Sun, sp. nov., is identified based on 13 leaf fossils, collected from the late Pliocene Mangbang Formation, Tengchong County of Yunnan Province, China. The important characters of the fossil are its oblong-ovate leaf shape, obliquely cordate base, doubly serrulate margin, straight and moderately thick primary vein, pinnate secondary veins, percurrent tertiary veins, orthogonally reticulate areoles, absence of veinlets, anomocytic stomata with double-layered stomatal rim, well-formed T-pieces and trichome bases, which indicates an affinity within the genus Carpinus section Carpinus subsection Monbeigianae, especially with C. tsaiana. Carpinus fossils were present from the Eocene to Pliocene with disjunctive distribution in the North Temperate Zone, which broadly reflected the present distribution pattern and probably demonstrates the tolerance of Carpinus to environmental change.

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Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful to Dr. Ferguson for revising the manuscript. We are also grateful to Dr. Xiao Liang for comments and discussion, Dr. Su Tao from Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences for collecting comparative material. This research is supported by the the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2012CB822000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41172022; No. 41202001), Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (Grant No. 20100211110019), Science and Technology Research Project of Chongqing Education Committee (No. KJ121406).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems of the Ministry of Education and School of Earth Science, Lanzhou University, 222 South Tianshui Road, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Jing Dai, Bainian Sun, Sanping Xie, Zhicheng Lin, Jingyu Wu & Kequn Dao

  2. College of Earth Science, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Jing Dai

  3. School of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Chongqing University of Science and Technology, Chongqing, 401331, China

    Zhicheng Lin

  4. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy (Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Nanjing, 210008, China

    Jingyu Wu

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  1. Jing Dai
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Correspondence to Bainian Sun.

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Dai, J., Sun, B., Xie, S. et al. A new species of Carpinus (Betulaceae) from the Pliocene of Yunnan Province, China. Plant Syst Evol 299, 643–658 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-012-0750-1

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