Devonian plants from Colombia, with discussion of their geological and palaeogeographical context

Abstract

Plant fossils are described from the Cuche Formation, Eastern Cordillera, Colombia in the area of Floresta. Those identified as Colpodexylon cf. deatsii Banks and cf. Archaeopteris sp. suggest an earliest Late Devonian (Frasnian) age for the formation. These or similar taxa are also found in contemporaneous deposits in western Venezuela, and other elements of the Venezuelan flora are found in a geographically intermediate locality. All three Devonian plant localities in the northwest of South America are within the Colombian Eastern Cordillera and its northern extension, the Venezuelan Perijá Range, an area that has been integrated as a part of the so-called ‘Eastern Andean Terrane’ or ‘Central Andean Province’, supposedly accreted to the autochthonous block of the Guyana Shield during the early Jurassic or before. Although both invertebrates and plants from this terrane have strong affinities to North American and European assemblages, and might be interpreted as implying a Laurussian origin for the Eastern Andean Terrane, the evidence is not yet unequivocal, with some authors postulating an in situ development of this province.