Sassafrasoxylon gottwaldii sp. nov. is a new taxon for fossil wood with
a suite of features diagnostic of Sassafras Nees & Eberm. of the Lauraceae.
The fossil wood described is from Late Cretaceous (Santonian-
Maastrichtian) sediments of the northern Antarctica Peninsula region.
This new species of Sassafrasoxylon Brezinová et Süss resembles the
species of extant Sassafras in being distinctly ring-porous, having vessel
elements with simple perforation plates and very occasional scalariform
plates with relatively few bars in the narrowest latewood vessels,
alternate intervascular pitting, marginal (initial) parenchyma bands and
paratracheal vasicentric parenchyma in the latewood, multiseriate rays
and oil and /or mucilage cells. The fossils were found as isolated pieces
of wood and therefore it is not certain whether the parent plant was Sassafras-
like in all characters. Consequently the fossils have been placed
in an organ genus rather than in extant Sassafras. This is the oldest record
of an organ with features closest to extant Sassafras and may suggest
that Sassafras first appeared in Gondwana and later radiated into
the Northern Hemisphere. The distribution of extant Sassafras in North
America and East Asia may represent a relict of a geographically more
widespread taxon in the past
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