Article: Barremian earliest angiosperm pollen

The first 'angiosperm' fossils from palaeolatitude Cretaceous 35° N. or more, appear to be tectate pollen from the English upper Wealden. This pollen with angiospermid characters is always less than 1% of Barremian palynomorph assemblages, and the usual grain diameter is less than 25 microns; it has, therefore, been necessary to study it by direct SEM search of strew mounts, enabling sculpture characters well below one micron to be used in correlation. Seven new fully described taxa and eight more candidate-taxa are presented from mid and late Barremian rocks of England; they have been described as biorecords and comparison records, the principal developments in this paper being the use of names instead of numbers for the records and a provision for the orderly mention of subordinate records. The records have also been referred to existing taxa in the few cases in which this has been possible. Although most of the records are from the upper Wealden Group, others are from fully marine strata; they also continue to be well represented into the Lower Greensand above. Comparison is made with fossils of lower Zone I of the Potomac Group of the eastern United States, and a preliminary correlation bracket is offered. The need for two separate but compatible systems of data-handling is discussed. Problems of extension of the evolutionary search both before and immediately after the mid Barremian are outlined.