Need help- identification of leaf imprint in travertine

[Farid]

Hi all,

I found this leaf imprint in a fossil travertine formation at edge of central desert of Iran. It belongs to a broadleaf species. Do you have any idea of its species? Any help you can give me would be appreciated!

Edited July 23, 2019 by Farid

[FranzBernhard]

Welcome to TFF from Austria!

Thanks for posting this nice specimen, but unfortunately, I can not help with ID. Good luck!
Franz Bernhard

[caldigger]

@paleoflor

[Mark Kmiecik]

Similar to Alnus, but any identification based solely on venation is only a guess.

[Farid]

Thank you so much for help. The region where this fossil comes is arid to semi-arid at the west of the Iranian Central desert. There are different taxa of the genus Alnus in Hyrcanian forest of northern Iran, north of Alborz Mountain with humid climate. If it is Alnus, it might be of an interglacial period when the climate was very different than today.

[Farid]

Thank you so much, Mr. Bernard. The forum is really very helpful.

[Mark Kmiecik]

14 hours ago, Farid said:

Thank you so much for help. The region where this fossil comes is arid to semi-arid at the west of the Iranian Central desert. There are different taxa of the genus Alnus in Hyrcanian forest of northern Iran, north of Alborz Mountain with humid climate. If it is Alnus, it might be of an interglacial period when the climate was very different than today.

If you can find another specimen with some of the edge present it might help. Obviously, an entire leaf would make it fairly easy to ID. The preservation is excellent. Nice specimen.

[Farid]

I have more specimen but mostly are fragments. I try to check the collection

[Johannes]

There doesn't have to be a different climate, to induce travertine/tufa formation in todays desert areas. Esp. in tectonically active areas, you can have travertine growth together with moistdepended plant species even in dryer climate periods.

 

I have worked on similar deposits thoughout Quaternary in serveral countries of the arabian peninsula... Unfortunately, there are only limited publications about the quaternary floras of thoses regions available. If I remember right there might exist one nice collection of such material, but not available for you due political reasons.

[Farid]

The region where this material comes located on a fault zone which is tectonically active. There are good publications about similar material from Armenia published by a French team. But for central Iran, Quaternary flora is poorly known. 

 

[abyssunder]

I can't give you precise ID narrowed down to the genus / species level, but this topic might be on help, I think: 

 

[Farid]

Thank you so much. much appreciated