CHARLIEA MANZANITANA,N. GEN., N. SP., AND OTHER ENIGMATIC PARALLEL-VEINED FOLIAR FORMS FROM THE UPPER PENNSYLVANIAN OF NEW MEXICO AND TEXAS

Charliea is a new genus (type-species: C. manzanitana), based on pinnately compound leaf material from the richly fossiliferous Virgilian (Upper Pennsylvanian) shales of the Kinney Brick Company quarry near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In several features Charliea resembles Russellites or a zamioid cycad. It has linear-oblong pinnae with broad, oblique attachment and a truncate tip, which is deeply incised to form two to four nearly equal lobes. The venation is simple, parallel, and sparingly dichotomous, each vein ending at the distal margin. The Kinney beds also contain Plagiozamites planchardi, another zamioid form with parallel-veined pinnae, differing from Charliea chiefly in having rounded tips and veins ending in the denticulate margins. An unnamed third form (genus B) in the Kinney beds has long, narrow pinnae with parallel veins and blunt tips; this strongly resembles the Mesozoic conifer Podozamites, but may just as well represent a cycadophyte. Another unnamed taxon (genus A), from an Upper Pennsylvanian deposit in Jack County, Texas, resembles genus B or Russellites in general shape and venation, but the critical distal margins are unknown. In their single-ordered parallel venation, these four foliar types contrast sharply with the two-ordered pinnate venation of most Pennsylvanian fern-like leaves, and seem to foreshadow Mesozoic morphologies. This tendency toward precocious evolution of parallel-veined foliar form in North America is also expressed by a single occurrence of the Asiatic, Permian genus Tingia in the Lower Pennsylvanian of Utah, and by the presence of the predominantly Triassic cycadeoid genus Pterophyllum in the Lower Permian of Texas.