# Building on the Devonian plant record of Gondwana: the Frasnian assemblage from Gooloogong, eastern Australia.

Brigitte Meyer-Berthaud, Gavin Young, Anne-Laure Decombeix

► To cite this version:

Brigitte Meyer-Berthaud, Gavin Young, Anne-Laure Decombeix. Building on the Devonian plant record of Gondwana: the Frasnian assemblage from Gooloogong, eastern Australia.. 9. Agora Paleobotanica Meeting, Agora Paleobotanica, Jul 2025, Paris, France. hal-05184014

HAL Id: hal-05184014

https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05184014v1

Submitted on 24 Jul 2025

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

# Building on the Devonian plant record of Gondwana: the Frasnian assemblage from Gooloogong, eastern Australia

Brigitte MEYER-BERTHAUD<fnref n="1" />*, Gavin YOUNG<fnref n="2" />, Anne-Laure DECOMBEIX<fnref n="1" />

In the Devonian, plants evolved modern vegetative and reproductive structures, leading to significant systematic diversification and the establishment of modern lineages. However, the most recent diversity analyses show significant paleogeographic biases in the fossil record, particularly with regard to the Gondwana paleocontinent <fnref n="1" />. This incompleteness of the data leads to an incomplete and perhaps distorted view of the patterns of this diversification. The study of the Gooloogong plant assemblage presented for this conference is a new contribution to the study of the Upper Devonian floras of Australia. The material comes from plant beds of the Gooloogong member of the Hunter Formation in central New South Wales <fnref n="2" />. It consists of specimens from the Ritchie & Jones collection at the Australian Museum in Sydney and fossils collected during a mission in 2004 in which Philippe Gerrienne took part. The fossils are fragmentary and preserved in the form of casts, adpressions and permineralizations. The assemblage features an association of Lycopsida represented by *Leptophloeum rhombicum*, Cladoxylopsida represented by an axis assigned to the genus *Denglongia*, and Archaeopteridales (Progymnospermopsida) represented by various vegetative remains including a leaf attributed to the species *Archaeopteris macilenta*. This association is characteristic of Frasnian levels in South China, confirming the age of the Gooloogong deposit ³,⁴. In addition to being the first record of *Denglongia* outside China and one of the earliest evidences of cladoxylopsids in Australia, this association shows the existence of floristic exchanges with South China.

1. Capel, E., Cleal, C.J., Servais, T., Cascales-Miñana, B., 2023. New insights into Silurian-Devonian palaeophytogeography. Palaeogeog., Palaeoclimatol., Palaeoecol. 613, III393.

2. Young, G.C., Sherwin, L., Raymond, O.L. 2000. Hervey Group. pp. I25-I49, In: Lyons, P., Raymond, O.L. & Duggan, M.B. (eds). Forbes I:250 000 Geological Sheet S155-7, 2nd edition, Explanatory Notes. AGSO Record 2000/20, xviii + 230 pp.

3. Cai, C., Wang, Y., 1995. Devonian floras, in: Li, X et al. (Eds.), Fossil floras of China through the geological ages. Guangdong Science and Technology Press, Guangzhou, pp. 28-77.

4. Xue, J., Hao, S., Basinger, James F., 2010. Anatomy of the Late Devonian *Denglongia hubeiensis*, with a discussion of the phylogeny of the Cladoxylopsida. Int. J. Plant Sci. I7I, I07-I20.

Acknowledgments: The Australian Museum, Sydney, is thanked for the loan of specimens and Merlin Ramel (UMR AMAP) for his technical help.

<footnote n="1">¹UMR AMAP, Univ. Montpellier, CNRS, CIRAD, INRA, IRD, Montpellier, France</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Australian National University, Canberra ACT, Australia</footnote>

<footnote>* meyerberthaud@cirad.fr</footnote>