| Fossil leaves from the Middle Miocene Savage
Canyon Formation, Nevada. Top specimen is 22mm long and belongs
to a Mountain Mahogany, genus Cercocarpus; leaf at bottom
is a Catalina Ironwood, 58mm in stem length, genus Lyonothamnus,
a species that was quite common throughout the ancestral Great
Basin region during Miocene times, but is now restricted solely
to the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California.
Lyonothamnus A. Gray from the later Cenozoic Era of North
America has recently been completely revised by Dr. Diane Erwin
and Howard Schorn of the University California Museum Of Paleontology. |
