PALAIOS
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PALAIOS; October 2005; v. 20; no. 5; p. 418-428; DOI: 10.2110/palo.2005.P05-25p
© 2005 SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology
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Plant Taphonomy: Ruminations on the Past, the Present, and the Future

DAVID K. FERGUSON1

1 Department of Paleontology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, A-1090 Vienna, Austria; david.kay.ferguson@univie.ac.at

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   THE PRE-TAPHONOMIC ERA
 
Although the term "taphonomy" was coined by Ivan Efremov (1907–1972) in 1940 for the study of the various processes leading to fossil assemblages, a number of taphonomic experiments already had been undertaken in the early 19th century. Thus, while still in his thirties, John Lindley (1799–1865) showed that biodegradation of plant leaves in water is selective. Of the 86 angiosperm species he investigated, only 8 (9.3%) survived two years when kept in an iron tank. On the other hand, 13 of the 16 conifers (81.25%) remained intact (Lindley and Hutton, 1831– 1837). Another plant taphonomist avant la lettre was Charles Darwin, who published his observations on the flotation of fruits and seeds (diaspores; Darwin, 1856). Christ's College, Cambridge, was not only Darwin's alma mater, but that of Professor Tom M. Harris. Many years ago, he told me about a little project he conducted while at Cambridge (1922–1935). The oak leaves he found in a riverbed were smaller than those that could be observed at eye level on the source trees. As we now know, this phenomenon is caused by the predominance of sun leaves in plant assemblages.

At roughly the same time, Ralph Chaney (1890–1971), working at Berkeley, formulated a set of rules regarding the factors affecting the composition of leaf assemblages. He believed that the following aspects were of prime importance (Chaney, 1924; Chaney and Sanborn, 1933): (1) distance of the species from the depocenter; (2) the heights of possible source plants; (3) the plant's leaf-shedding ability; (4) leaf size and shape, because these influence dissemination by wind and water; and (5) the original thickness of the lamina, as a measure of resistance to leaf destruction. Plant taphonomy became important to me in the late 1960s during my doctoral thesis (Ferguson, 1971. . . [Full Text of this Article]


   EARLY FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS
 
Taphonomic Aspects of Leaves and Woody Tissues
Spores, Pollen, and Diaspores
Biostratinomic Processes Affecting Accumulation and Burial
Special Cases—Volcaniclastic Terrains and Wildfires

   RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
 
Taphonomic Aspects of Leaves and Woody Tissues
Spores, Pollen, and Diaspores
Biostratinomic Processes Affecting Accumulation and Burial
Advances in Biogeochemistry

   THE FUTURE
 





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