Walchia
| Walchia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Walchia piniformis | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Division: | Pinophyta |
| Class: | Pinopsida |
| Order: | Voltziales |
| Genus: | Walchia |
| Species | |
| |
Walchia is a fossil conifer, cypress-like genus of Upper Pennsylvanian (Carboniferous) and lower Permian (about 310-290 Mya). It is found in Europe; also North America. A forest of in-situ Walchia tree-stumps is located on the Northumberland Strait coast at Brule, Nova Scotia.
Besides the Walchia forest, fallen tree trunks, and leaflet impressions, the forest, fossil-rich layer contains numerous, 4-legged, tetrapod fossil trackways.
Individual species
W. hypnoides: from the schists of Lodeve; also copper slates of the Zechstein in Mansfeld.
Monuran trackways
At the same time period of 290 mya, another species was making fossil trackways, now preserved in New Mexico; Walchia leaflets are found in the same fossil layers. The Monuran trackways were made by Permian, wingless insects called monurans, (meaning "one-tail"); the insects' means of locomotion was hopping, then walking.
These 290 mya layers contain footprints of the large Dimetrodon, large/small raindrop impact marks, and also these fossil trackways of insects.
References
External links
General articles:
- Chemosystematic and microstructural investigations--(including Walchia)
- Book preview-(1854)--W. hypnoides discussion
Walchia Fossil examples:
- Graphic of W. piniformis branchlets, from James D. Dana, "Manual of Geology"
- Photo-High Res; Article – www.news.ucdavis.edu--"A Bumpy Shift from Icehouse to Greenhouse", Fossil from Smithsonian. Walchia went from the 'Uplands' to the lower basins-(floodplain forest region of Brule, Nova Scotia).
- Photo-High Res--4 cm width Leaflet-(Order Voltziales); Article – www.colby.edu-"Carboniferous Paleoecological Scenarios"
Walchia fossils, with Monuran trackways:
- "The Footfalls and Bellyflops of Permian Insects" – (from the Robledo Mountains of New Mexico)