Description

Palaeocarpinus dakotensis
Early Paleocene
Sentinel Butte Member, Fort Union Fm.
Morton County, North Dakota ND USA
97mm slab with fruiting body and nuts.

Plant. Fruit. Association. Infructescence.

Palaeocarpinus dakotensis is an extinct plant in the Family Coryloideae and subfamily, Betulaceae, which includes modern birch trees. Palaeocarpinus is known from the Paleocene of western North America, Europe, and Asia. It survived into the Eocene of Oregon but disappears from the fossil record after that.

This a plant fossil from a point in geologic time just a couple of million years after the end-Cretaceous extinction when life on land and at sea was recovering from that event and its after-effects.

Most plant fossils from the Sentinel Butte Formation are isolated leaves and seeds but here we have a fruiting body and nuts – the kind of association that allows paleobotanists to see what fruits go with what branches. Also, it’s tough to find Early Paleocene fossils of any kind when you’re looking for them.