Description

Early Paleocene
Sentinel Butte Member, Fort Union Fm.
Near Almont, North Dakota, USA

24mm cone on 67mm slab.

Seed, Angiosperm.

Here’s a plant fossil from a couple of million years after the K/T extinction.  Life at sea and on land was recovering after that event.  Mammals were diversifying with many forms that would be unfamiliar to us today along with the earliest ancestors of some groups we do know.

It’s difficult to ID isolated leaves, cones, and fruits when they’re not known from specimens connected to other parts of the same plant especially with pre-Eocene forms. Ideally, you would find the isolated pieces but also a nice fossil branch with leaves, fruit/cones still attached. The fossil record rarely allows such a specimen.