Pecopteris Fossil Fern Leaf Plant Branch Vegetable Paleozoic Carboniferous Collection (3)

Fossil Fern Leaves Plants on matrix mm 128 x 94 x 30 gr 530 Pecopteris polymorpha Wood Branches Fossilized Vegetables Extinct Paleozoic Carboniferous Collecting Paleontology Botany Museum.

Remarkable fossil find of ferns from the upper Pennsylvanian, representative collectble specimen of excellent quality, with beautiful details of the individual twigs of the shrubs and their leaves, perfectly preserved in the silt of the fossilized clayey sediment.
No restoration at all. Only a piece, as in photo.

Pteridophytes (Pteridophyta, in ancient Greek means fern) are cryptogams (i.e. with invisible sexual organs) to which species usually known as ferns, lycopods and horsetails belong. They are an ancient group, which already appeared in the Lower Devonian, exploded at the end of the Mesozoic and is still represented today by around 11,000 species.
These plants, now cormophytes, are made up of a stem, true roots and leaves, and have a vascular system. They are in fact the first terrestrial plants that began to differentiate a fluid transport system, thus allowing further growth in height unlike the Bryophytes (mosses) which were unable to free themselves completely from aquatic life.
Evolutionarily they present some important differences compared to bryophytes: lignin appears, the roots have an absorption function and have sporophytes for the production of spores. Unlike angiosperms and gymnosperms, ferns do not have seeds but spread through the environment through spores.

The Montceau-les-Mines Lagerstätte (Late Stephanian, Late Carboniferous) is located northeast of the French Massif Central.
Situated at equatorial latitudes during the Pennsylvanian, this Lagerstätte, probably a freshwater environment, preserves a rich and diverse flora (lycopsids, sphenopsids, ferns, pteridosperms, and cordaites) and fauna (bivalves, annelids, crustaceans, myriapods, insects, chelicerates, myxinoids, actinopterygians, sarcopterygians and tetrapods). These exceptionally preserved fossils can be found either flattened in shales or three-dimensionally preserved in sideritic nodules. The fossils from the nodules are exceptional for at least two reasons: the absence of major disarticulation of their body structure and the preservation of soft parts and extremely fragile cuticular structures. Such preservation was made possible by the combination of several factors: rapid burial in fine anoxic mud, early siderite precipitation (inducing the nodule formation) and phosphatization of cuticles and soft-bodied features.