Bashkirian Age

What happens during this time?

Flora

• Tropical wetlands allow for the expansion of arborescent lycopsid swamps

  • Tree clubmosses include Lepidophloios, Diaphorodendron,Paracyclopodites, Sigillaria

• Tree-sized and shrub-sized horsetails and sphenophyllales present: Calamites and Sphenophyllum

• Marattitoid tree fern (Psaronius) and early seed ferns (Medullosa).

• The oldest known fossil of an actively growing root meristem; cell patterning identifies it as a gymnosperm (Hetherington et al. 2016)

• The earliest known amber comes from this time, ~320 Ma, but the plant origin of the resin is unknown (Bray & Anderson 2009; Grimaldi 2009)

  • The molecular composition seems similar to resin from angiosperms, but the earliest evidence of angiosperms is nearly 200 million years later, in the Early Cretaceous

Fauna

• Winged insects appear, with Mazothairos, an insect in an extinct order called the Palaeodictyoptera

Above: Reconstruction of Mazothairos, an early flying insect