Permian spores from the Gondwana Succession in India

Abstract

The deposits of Permian sediments (Figs 1 & 2) are spread in a wide spatial extent on the Indian Peninsula. Palynological studies of the glacial sediments of earliest Permian (Talchir Formation) through the coal horizon of Upper Permian represent a high degree of morphographical variations among spores and pollen grains. These adequately identified taxa exhibit many kinds of exinal features that include simple, cingulate and zonate spores. The spores recovered are the optimum representation of the producing plants in the contemporaneous flora. The Permian sediments in India are mostly deposited under terrestrial environment, and these deposits are variedly interrupted by regional breaks. The microstructures of exine among these spores have great potential that determine the primitive and advanced states in morphological lineages through time and this variability of exine structures are effectively used in biostratigraphy. The objective of this publication is to put together the available published data on the morphotaxonomy of spores from the Permian sediments in India. These spores are placed in accordance with classification proposed by Potonié, 1956. In the description part, each taxon includes its type species, salient features of the genus and the species described under the genus, locality, horizon and age. The holotype figure of each species has been scanned from the original publication. The species under a taxon are arranged in the ascending order of their year of publication (Pl. 1–10). Here, the geological age is dealt in the standard time scale. In the last chapter, stratigraphical occurrences along with the First Appearance Datum (FAD) of some distinct species are commented, which are significant in the Assemblage Zones of key pollen taxa described by Tiwari and Tripathi, 1992. The literature consulted herein is given in the bibliography that dates up to 2011.