''Suciacarpa'' is an extinct

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

asterid In the APG IV system (2016) for the classification of flowering plants, the name asterids denotes a clade (a monophyletic group). Asterids is the largest group of flowering plants, with more than 80,000 species, about a third of the total flower ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. They include all forbs (flowering plants without a woody stem), grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of ...

s in the order

Cornales The Cornales are an order of flowering plants, early diverging among the asterids, containing about 600 species. Plants within the Cornales usually have four-parted flowers, drupaceous fruits, and inferior to half-inferior gynoecia topped with d ...

. It is known from the fossil species ''Suciacarpa starrii'' and ''Suciacarpa xiangae'', both found in Western North America.

History and classification

''Suciacarpa'' is known from several anatomically preserved fruits found in north-western

Washington state Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washingto ...

, United States, and

Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are of land. The island is the largest by ...

, British Columbia. At time of description the ''S. starrii''

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

specimen, UF 19276-54286, and

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype). O ...

, UF 19304-54982, were residing in the paleobotanical collections housed by the

Florida Museum of Natural History The Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) is Florida's official state-sponsored and chartered natural-history museum. Its main facilities are located at 3215 Hull Road on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville. The main pub ...

. The two fruits were first studied by

Oregon State University Oregon State University (OSU) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degree ...

paleobotanist Brian Atkinson, with his 2016

type description A species description is a formal description of a newly discovered species, usually in the form of a scientific paper. Its purpose is to give a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differs from species that have ...

for the genus and species being published in the NRC Research Press journal ''Botany''. Atkinson coined the genus name ''Suciacarpa'' as a combination of "Sucia" after the type locality and the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

''carpa'' meaning ''fruit''. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''starrii'' was chosen as a patronym honoring David W. Starr, who helped collect the fossils and to increase awareness of Sucia Island in the paleontology community. The fruits show a mosaic combination of features seen in the Cornales family groups

Cornaceae The Cornaceae are a cosmopolitan family of flowering plants in the order Cornales. The family contains approximately 85 species in two genera, '' Alangium'' and '' Cornus''. They are mostly trees and shrubs, which may be deciduous or evergreen, ...

Alangiaceae Alangiaceae was recognized as a small family of small dicotyledon trees, shrubs or lianas, closely related to the Cornaceae (dogwood family). There is only one genus, '' Alangium'', with seventeen species. The APG II states that Alangiaceae i ...

and

Nyssaceae Nyssaceae is a family of flowering trees sometimes included in the dogwood family (Cornaceae). Nyssaceae is composed of 37 known species in the following five genera:Averyanov, L. V. & Hiep, N. T. (2002). ''Diplopanax vietnamensis'', a New Specie ...

, Mastixiaceae, and Davidiaceae, but does not conform to any one particular family and thus was left as ''

incertae sedis ' () or ''problematica'' is a term used for a taxonomic group where its broader relationships are unknown or undefined. Alternatively, such groups are frequently referred to as "enigmatic taxa". In the system of open nomenclature, uncertain ...

'' within the order. The Japanese Cornalean species '' Hironoia fusiformis'' described from coalified fossils of

Coniacian The Coniacian is an age or stage in the geologic timescale. It is a subdivision of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series and spans the time between 89.8 ± 1 Ma and 86.3 ± 0.7 Ma (million years ago). The Coniacian is preceded b ...

age differ from ''Suciacarpa'' in several ways. The holotype fruit has preserved seeds with

fungal A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from ...

hyphae A hypha (; ) is a long, branching, filamentous structure of a fungus, oomycete, or actinobacterium. In most fungi, hyphae are the main mode of vegetative growth, and are collectively called a mycelium. Structure A hypha consists of one or ...

and

pyrite The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Fe S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral. Pyrite's metallic luster and pale brass-yellow hue giv ...

crystals in the cell structure.

Distribution and paleoecology

The ''S. starrii''holotype specimen was collected on

Sucia Island Sucia Island () is located north of Orcas Island Orcas Island () is the largest of the San Juan Islands of the Pacific Northwest, which are in the northwestern corner of San Juan County, Washington. History and naming of the island The nam ...

while the paratype was collected on Little Sucia Island. Both fruits are preserved in calcareous nodules recovered from exposures of the

Campanian The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous Epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campani ...

age Cedar District Formation. The nodules formed in what is thought to have been a shallow marine shelf environment that also had

ammonites Ammonoids are a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid and cuttle ...

and inoceramid bivalves. The formation has also preserved fossils of other terrestrial organisms including a single land snail, '' Condonella suciensis'' and a

theropod Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally ...

femur, the first dinosaur identified from Washington State. The only fossil of ''S. xiangae'' was found in a calcareous nodule from an outcrop of the late Campanian

Spray Formation The Spray Formation is a geologic formation in British Columbia. It preserves fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include ...

, part of the Cretaceous

Nanaimo Group The Nanaimo Group is a geologic group in both British Columbia and Washington state. It preserves fossils dating back to the Cretaceous period. Divisions * Gabriola Formation * Spray Formation * Geoffroy Formation * Northumberland Formati ...

. The formation outcrop is in the area of Shelter point on the central eastern coast of Vancouver Island, north of Sucuia and Little Sucia Islands. There is differing opinion regarding what latitude the formations were deposited at in the Campanian. One suggestion, the Baja–British Columbia hypothesis, is that in the Cretaceous the area was located at about 30° north latitude, similar to Modern

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

, and subsequent tectonic movement has shifted the area north to its present-day location. The other suggestion also involves northward tectonic movement, but suggests the Cretaceous location for the sediments was approximately the region of

Northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...

Description

The ''S. starrii'' fruits have a four-chambered structure with a smooth, woody exterior endocarp that is formed from

sclerenchyma The ground tissue of plants includes all tissues that are neither dermal nor vascular. It can be divided into three types based on the nature of the cell walls. # Parenchyma cells have thin primary walls and usually remain alive after they becom ...

tissues. The fruits are approximately in diameter and long with each of the four crescent-shaped germination chambers opening near the top of the fruit. The germination chambers have a single seed each, attached to the chamber wall near the apex. Based on the positioning of the preserved fungal hyphae, the cells of the seed

integument In biology, an integument is the tissue surrounding an organism's body or an organ within, such as skin, a husk, shell, germ or rind. Etymology The term is derived from ''integumentum'', which is Latin for "a covering". In a transferred, or ...

were rectangular in outline and small. Like members of Nyssaceae, ''S. starrii'' has short germination valves that occupy only about half of the fruit, but have secretory chambers, a feature only seen in cornelian cherries of the ''

Cornus ''Cornus'' is a genus of about 30–60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods, which can generally be distinguished by their blossoms, berries, and distinctive bark. Most are deciduous trees or shru ...

'' subgenus ''Cornus''. Also ''S. starrii'' has a pair of vascular bundles running through each of the septa lengthwise. The two bundles converge near the top of the septum to enter the seed.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q28184882 Fossil taxa described in 2016 Cornales Late Cretaceous plants Extinct flora of North America

† A dagger, obelisk, or obelus is a typographical mark that usually indicates a footnote if an asterisk has already been used. The symbol is also used to indicate death (of people) or extinction (of species). It is one of the modern descendan ...

Cretaceous angiosperms Paleontology in Washington (state) Prehistoric angiosperm genera