An Early Permian plant assemblage from the Taiyuan Formation of northern China with compression/impression and permineralized preservation

A small but diverse fossil flora is described from the Early Permian Taiyua n Formation occurring at the Yangshuling mine in Pingquan district of Hebei Province, northern China. Fossils occur as compression/impressions within mudrocks and fine-grained sandstones and also as carbonate permineralizatio ns within volcaniclastic tuffs. All are fragmentary and contain lycopsids, sphenopsids, ferns and seed plants, and include several new species. In the compression assemblage sphenopsid and pteridosperm foliage accounts for th e majority of the fossils recognised with only a few other kinds of plant o rgans present. In contrast, the permineralized assemblage is dominated by c ordaitaleans with a composition similar to that occurring in coal-ball asse mblages elsewhere in the Taiyuan Formation. From the taxonomic synthesis pr esented it is apparent that the Yangshulin,a permineralized assemblage cont ains many of the plant taxa diagnostic of the northern realm of the Early P ermian Cathaysian flora, and preserves a representative sample of the wetla nd coal-swamp vegetation of this time. The permineralized assemblage at Yan gshuling represents the first example of anatomically preserved plants from volcaniclastic lithologies from the Palaeozoic of China, raising the possi bility of similarly preserved plant-fossil assemblages elsewhere in the Cat haysian realm. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.