PALEOBOTANY OF LATE CARBONIFEROUS AND EARLY PERMIAN STRATA IN CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE: A REVIEW

Late Carboniferous and earliest Permian strata in central and western Europe were deposited nearly exclusively in terrestrial environments. A facies change occurs in this stratigraphic interval from gray colored strata to red-beds and this changeover served as the system boundary well into the 20^th century. An old miners’ term for the red beds, the “Rotliegende” was used for the red facies and acquired the meaning of “lower Permian.” In some parts of central Germany a copper-bearing black shale, called Kupferschiefer,” was mined and was underlain by the Rotliegende, i.e. the “red” that lies below the mined seam. Modern stratigraphic work has established that the lower part of the Rotliegende is Carboniferous in age and the facies change is time transgressive. At first, biostratigraphy in these beds was based exclusively on plant macrofossils and Callipteris conferta, a peltasperm foliage type, was used as the index fossil for the base of the Permian. Today it is clear that Callipteris and similar forms represent floras living in seasonally drier environments that expanded over time and existed well before the beginning of the Permian. The floras of the latest Carboniferous to earliest Permian interval are known from a number of facies including coal-bearing strata, fluvial red-bed sequences, and forests blown down by volcanic blasts á la Mount St, Helens (Chemnitz). Larger and smaller tectonic basins formed during the late phases or after the Hercynian orogeny that preserved these strata and the floras.