''Suciacarpa'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

asterid Asterids are a large clade (monophyletic group) of flowering plants, composed of 17 orders and more than 80,000 species, about a third of the total flowering plant species. The asterids are divided into the unranked clades lamiids (8 orders) and ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

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 United States. It is often referred to as Washington State to distinguish it from the national capital, both named after George Washington ...

, 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 ...

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

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

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 (biology), isotype ...

, 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, Florida, Gaine ...

. 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, United States. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate degree programs and a variety of graduate and doctor ...

paleobotanist Brian Atkinson, with his 2016

type description A species description is a formal scientific description of a newly encountered species, typically articulated through a scientific publication. Its purpose is to provide a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differ ...

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: 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 of all kno ...

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

specific epithet In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

''starrii'' was chosen as a

patronym A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (more specifically an avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor. It is the male equivalent of a matronymic. Patronymics are used, ...

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 is ...

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 Speci ...

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

incertae sedis or is a term used for a taxonomy (biology), 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, uncertainty ...

'' 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 by ...

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

fungal A fungus (: fungi , , , or ; 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 one of the tradit ...

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 o ...

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 ...

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, in the San Juan Islands, San Juan County, Washington, United States. It is the largest of an archipelago of ten islands including Sucia Island, Little Sucia, Ewing, Justice, Herndon, the Clust ...

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. Campa ...

age

Cedar District Formation The Cedar District Formation is a Formation (geology), geologic formation exposed on Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands of British Columbia and San Juan Islands of Washington (state). It preserves fossils dating back to the Campanian Epoch (geolo ...

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

ammonites Ammonoids are extinct, (typically) coiled-shelled cephalopods comprising the subclass Ammonoidea. They are more closely related to living octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish (which comprise the clade Coleoidea) than they are to nautiluses (family N ...

and inoceramid bivalves. The formation has also preserved fossils of other terrestrial organisms including a single

land snail A land snail is any of the numerous species of snail that live on land, as opposed to the sea snails and freshwater snails. ''Land snail'' is the common name for terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial gastropod mollusks that have gastropod shell, shel ...

, '' Condonella suciensis'' and a

theropod Theropoda (; from ancient Greek , (''therion'') "wild beast"; , (''pous, podos'') "foot"">wiktionary:ποδός"> (''pous, podos'') "foot" is one of the three major groups (clades) of dinosaurs, alongside Ornithischia and Sauropodom ...

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

outcrop An outcrop or rocky outcrop is a visible exposure of bedrock or ancient superficial deposits on the surface of the Earth and other terrestrial planets. Features Outcrops do not cover the majority of the Earth's land surface because in most p ...

of the late Campanian Spray Formation, part of the Cretaceous Nanaimo Group. 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, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California, is a state in Mexico. It is the northwesternmost of the 32 federal entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1952, the area was known as the North Territory of B ...

, 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 (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...

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. This tissue system is present between the dermal tissue and forms the main bulk of th ...

tissues. The fruits are approximately in diameter and long with each of the four crescent-shaped

germination Germination is the process by which an organism grows from a seed or spore. The term is applied to the sprouting of a seedling from a seed of an angiosperm or gymnosperm, the growth of a sporeling from a spore, such as the spores of fungi, ...

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, Exoskeleton, shell, germ or Peel (fruit), rind. Etymology The term is derived from ''integumentum'', which is Latin for "a coverin ...

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 or cornels, which can generally be distinguished by their blossoms, berries, and distinctive bark. Most are deciduous ...

'' 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 or languages). It is one of the mo ...

Cretaceous angiosperms Paleontology in Washington (state) Prehistoric angiosperm genera