Description

Early Cretaceous (Berriasian)
Yixian Formation
Huangbangi Valley, Beipiao, Liaoning Province, China

Big 91mm inflorescence on 156mm slab. Very rare.

Cone, Conifer.

Pityostrobus is a genus of cone-bearing plant (conifer) that appeared during the Triassic Period and lived across the rest of the Mesozoic Era in North America and Eurasia, even surviving the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.  However, it was rare in the Early Cenozoic, most recently-known from the Late Eocene of the United Kingdom – perhaps a victim of the cooling climates of that time.

An inflorescence is usually a cluster of flowers on a plant or the part of the plant where flowers are formed (but in cycads it can be a body containing macrospores).

This conifer fossil comes from a time just after flowering plants appeared.  By the end of the Cretaceous flowering plants were becoming the dominant plants on earth.