Paleozoic Fossil Plants

[John K]

paleoflo suggested I start a new thread on plant fossils from the Permian, so I started one on the whole Paleozoic!

These are the first plant fossils I ever collected, on a trip years ago visiting a friend of mine in Topeka, Kansas, where he worked as a groundwater hydrologist for the State. we found these in hard, grey nodules we found near a water "tank" that had been excavated for livestock. I'm pretty sure we were in the Chase group of shales/limestone, which would place these from the early Permian.

I'm not sure of the id's with any of these, so thoughtful comments are appreciated!

[paleoflor]

Those are some very interesting plant fossils (I especially like the first specimen) from a (for me at least) new locality. Thanks for sharing them! Hopefully someone with experience with the Permian geology/floras of Kansas will be able to help you further with the identification.

As to plant fossils from the Palaeozoic, I'd like start with a Permian specimen as well (since there already is a very extensive thread on the Carboniferous, which is absolutely worth a visit by the way). The fossil comes from near Tabarz (Thuringia, Germany) and was collected during a vacation last spring, from rocks belonging to the Ilmenau Fm. (Rotliegendes, Lower Permian). The scaled branches (best visible on the left hand-side) are probably Walchian conifer twigs of some sort, though I haven't been able to properly identify them. Any help on these is most welcome. Also interesting, the small craters (best visible on the right hand-side) are popularly interpreted as fossil rain (impact sites of droplets). However, they could also, perhaps more likely, be degassing features (there actually is a quite nice discussion on Wikipedia). I like this specimen, for it looks like these little branches became entrapped in the mud somehow only yesterday...