Walchia Explained

Walchia is a primitive fossil conifer found in upper Pennsylvanian (Carboniferous) and lower Permian (about 310-290 Mya) rocks of Europe and North America. A forest of in-situ Walchia tree-stumps is located on the Northumberland Strait coast at Brule, Nova Scotia.

Besides the Walchia forest, fallen tree trunks, and leaflet impressions, the forest, fossil-rich layer contains numerous, 4-legged, tetrapod fossil trackways.

Individual species

W. hypnoides: from the schists of Lodeve; also copper slates of the Zechstein in Mansfeld.

Monuran trackways

At the same time period of 290 mya, another species was making fossil trackways, now preserved in New Mexico; Walchia leaflets are found in the same fossil layers. The Monuran trackways were made by Permian, wingless insects called monurans, (meaning "one-tail"); the insects' means of locomotion was hopping, then walking.

These 290 mya layers contain footprints of the large Dimetrodon, large/small raindrop impact marks, and also these fossil trackways of insects.

External links

General articles:

• Chemosystematic and microstructural investigations--(including Walchia)
• Book preview-(1854)--W. hypnoides discussion

Walchia Fossil examples:

• Graphic of W. piniformis branchlets, from James D. Dana, "Manual of Geology" http://www.geology.19thcenturyscience.org/books/1896-Dana-ManGeol/htm/doc-full.html
• Photo-High Res

Article  - www.news.ucdavis.edu--"A Bumpy Shift from Icehouse to Greenhouse", Fossil from Smithsonian. Walchia went from the 'Uplands' to the lower basins-(floodplain forest region of Brule, Nova Scotia).

• Photo-High Res--4 cm width Leaflet-(Order Voltziales)

Article  - www.colby.edu-"Carboniferous Paleoecological Scenarios"

Walchia fossils, with Monuran trackways:

• "The Footfalls and Bellyflops of Permian Insects"  - (from the Robledo Mountains of New Mexico)