Authors : Sanjay W. Patil, Rajesh R. Dahegaonkar, Sudhakar D. Petkar
Page Nos : 99-103
Description :
The present paper deals with the description of a new genus of petrified achenal fruit from the Deccan Intertrappean beds of Marai Patan, Tahsil-Jiwati, Dist.-Chandrapur, Maharashtra, India. The fruit is stalked, oblong, dry, indehiscent achene type dicot fruit. Ovary is unilocular, single seeded, with basal placentation. Fruit is 44.77 µm long and 26.05 µm broad. Fruit wall is 1.91 µm thick. The fruit wall is differentiated into three zones. The outer layer epicarp is 0.22 µm thick. Middle layer mesocarp is 0.93 µm thick and inner layer endocarp is 0.79 µm thick. The seed is large and measures about 36.32 µm long and 23 µm broad in size. The seed coat is bitegmic, outer seed coat is testa and inner seed coat is tegmen. Testa measures about 0.31 µm in thickness and tegmen about 0.39 µm thicknesses. Embryo is large and occupies almost all the space of seed cavity. Finally summing up the comparison and discussion on the described fossil fruit it can be concluded that the present specimen under investigation does not resemble any of the living achenal fruits as well as recorded fossil flora of Deccan Intertrappean beds as described earlier except Achenocarpon sharmaii (Kapgate et al. 2009) with minor differences hence it is named as Achenocarpon patanii sp. nov. The generic name is being after the achene type of fruit Achenocarpon sharmaii (Kapgate et al. 2009) and specific name indicates the name of the locality from where it was collected.
