Description

Middle Miocene (Seldovian)
Sucker Creek Formation – Sucker Creek Flora
Malheur County, Oregon, USA
20mm cone scale with seeds still attached on 40mm slab
Cone,

Seeds are difficult-to-impossible to identify if they are not found connected to enough of another part of the plant as in this case where they are attached to just a piece of a cone.  At best you can say this is part of a conifer.

This specimen was deposited during a warm phase of the Cenozoic Era and just before the Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum, an interval of prolonged warming (approx. 14-16 million years ago) in not only shallow seas and along coasts but also in the deep ocean and at higher latitudes.  The MMCO ended up being a brief interruption in an overall cooling trend that started in the Middle Eocene and led to the ices ages of the Pleistocene.