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Abstract:
Mississippian lycopsid forests in growth position are extremely rare, and their community-scale ecology remains enigmatic. This is a significant gap in our knowledge, not least because they represent the precursors of Pennsylvanian 'Coal Forests'. In this paper, nearly 700 in situ fossil trees are described from 13 entisol or inceptisol horizons in the mid-Tournaisian Albert Formation (Horton Group) at Norton, near Sussex, New Brunswick, Canada. These trees, almost all of which are lycopsids of the Protostigmaria-Lepidodendropsis-type, are rooted mostly in the flood-disturbed interdistributary wetland deposits of prograding wave-dominated deltas. Tree mapping on extensive palaeosol surfaces indicates the existence of extremely dense forest vegetation. Scaled up to standard forestry units, densities of 10 000-30 000 trees per hectare are inferred. A significant inverse linear relationship between tree diameter and density for the five most extensive palaeosols indicates that inter-tree competition led to natural self-thinning as the forests matured. Forest maturation also led to a reduction in tree-spacing heterogeneity. Flood events regularly killed whole stands at Norton, burying trees in sandstone sheets, and preventing establishment of climax vegetation. Charcoal remains demonstrate that wildfire was another important disturbance process.
Keywords: Tournaisian, deltaic environment, lycopsids, palaeoecology, charcoal.
Sandstone-cast lycopsid trees in growth position are a very common feature of Pennsylvanian-aged strata in North America and Europe, and have been studied for over two centuries (Gastaldo 1986a). These spectacular upright specimens of Lepidodendron sensu latu and Sigillaria with attached Stigmaria rootstocks (Scott & Calder 1994) provide an evocative record of the vast tracts of peat-forming tropical rainforests that stretched in a nearly continuous belt from Kentucky to the Urals (DiMichele & Phillips 1994). As trees are preserved in their original growth context, they provide a wealth of important palaeoecological data (Calder et al. 1996).
In contrast, Mississippian-aged fossil trees in growth position are extremely rare. Furthermore, almost all of these in situ fossils have been described in well-drained alluvial-plain deposits rather than wetland facies, and therefore dominantly consist of droughtadapted gymnosperm trees (Long 1979; Galtier et al. 1994). Mississippian wetland facies containing erect lycopsid trees that represent the precursors of Pennsylvanian 'Coal Forests' (Pigg 1992, 2001) have only rarely been described, and never with palaeoecological detail (Jennings 1975; Jennings et al. 1983; Heeler 1986; Scheckler 1986a, b; Martel...