Oleinites liguricus M. SACHSE , 2001

Niccolini, Gabriele, Martinetto, Edoardo, Lanini, Benedetta, Menichetti, Elena, Fusco, Fabio, Hakobyan, Elen & Bertini, Adele, 2022, Late Messinian Flora From The Post-Evaporitic Deposits Of The Piedmont Basin (Northwest Italy), Fossil Imprint 78 (1), pp. 189-216 : 202

cf. Oleinites liguricus M. SACHSE, 2001

Text-fig. 3a , Pl. 3, Figs 8, 9

M a t e r i a l. The macrofossil material potentially belonging to Oleaceae is represented by about twenty leaves from the Ciabòt Cagna locality, stored at the MCEA.

R e m a r k s. The leaves occurring at Ciabòt Cagna (the commonest type at this site) are entire-margined and leathery, with brochidodromous venation. In general, even if we could not study the cuticle (and this is the main reason for using open nomenclature), their venation pattern agrees with that in Oleinites liguricus described by Sachse (2001) based on more fragmentary specimens, also from post-evaporitic sediments of the PB. The long, unwrinkled petiole preserved in two specimens from Ciabòt Cagna is important as a character indicating Oleaceae rather than the very similar Fabaceae ; furthermore, there is no evidence that any of these common laminae may represent a leaflet (leaflet petiolules with prominent striations may indicate Fabaceae or Connaraceae ; Dilcher and Lott 2005). Comparable leaves are produced by the extant plants Chionanthus and Picconia (AITON) DC. , whereas affinity to Fraxinus , Osmanthus LOUR. and Phillyrea can be excluded due to their toothed leaf margin.

Figures

Text-fig. 3. Examples of plant macrofossil assemblages from post-evaporitic sections. a: bedding plane from Ciabòt Cagna covered by impressions of plant parts, with dominance of leaves of cf. Oleinites liguricus M.SACHSE, MCEA-P05038. b: waterloggedcompressed seeds of Toddalia latisiliquata (R.LUDW.) H.-J.GREGOR sieved out of a bulk sediment sample from Pollenzo, MGPT- PU141033. c: millimeter-sized, waterlogged-compressed seeds of Sambucus pulchella C.REID et E.REID with abundant cracks, probably formed during both diagenesis and extraction of the fossils (bulk sediment sample from Ciabòt Cagna), MGPT-