Description

Quercus stellata

Pliocene

Rita Blanca Formation

Oldham County, TX USA.

Delicate 24mm western scrub oak leaf on 90mm slab.

Plant.

Quercus is the genus for oak trees.  The earliest confidently-identified fossils are pollen from the Late Paleocene of Austria, and by the Middle Eocene, Quercus is known from North America, Europe, and Asia.  Oaks originated in tropical forests but they continued to thrive while other trees retreated to lower latitudes as climates became cooler and drier across the Oligocene and Miocene.

Q. stellata is the modern post oak (iron oak).