U.S. - Argentina Cooperative Research on Permian Plants from Argentina and Antarctica: Distribution in Time and Space

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This award supports research in antarctic paleobotany to be conducted by Thomas and Edith Taylor of Ohio State University in cooperation with Sergio Archangelsky of the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires. The work is an extension of a study of Permian plants from the Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica. It will continue cooperative work on fossil floras from Patagonia by examining Permian floras in the field and in the laboratory. Field work will include collection of fossil plants and examination of the depositional environment and paleoecology of the fossil sites. The data will be compared with similar data gathered on Permian sites in Antarctica during the 1988-1989 and 1989-1990 field seasons. Utilizing detailed information about field relationships and floral composition, it will be possible to correlate biostratigraphy of these two areas. The research outlined in this proposal represents a colla- borative program designed to examine fossil plants of Permian age from southern Argentina and Antarctica. The U.S. component (Taylor and Taylor) have expertise in collections obtained from sites in Antarctica. Their Argentine colleagues (Archangelsky, Cuneo and Andreis) have expertise with Permian plants and depositional environments from Patagonia. This program provides a unique opportunity to interface these two data sets and to provide a synergistic evaluation of Permian floras from this sector of Gondwana. Correlations between these floras and those from other Gondwana continents are important in understanding biogeographic factors such as floral migration and evolution, as well as being indispensable in developing biostratigraphic charts.