Venezuelan paleoflora of the Pennsylvanian-Early Permian: Paleobiogeographical relationships to central and western equatorial Pangea

The flora of northwestern Venezuela shows close links with the Pennsylvanian flora of the Northern Hemisphere and Northern Africa; in the Early Permian, it also closely matches the flora reported in the Southwestern and Central United States. The Permian fossils from Venezuela have various species and genera in common with that of this part of the USA, not only flora, but also warm-water matine fauna. The floristic data studied here provide evidence of a close relationship of the plants of the central portion of Pangea with those of Gondwanaland. Based on these similarities in the flora, it is suggested that during the Pennsylvanian-Early Permian, the northeastern part of Gondwanaland, which was one of the regions most affected by the formation of Pangea, had a progressively drier climate, with the vegetation characteristic of such conditions. Moreover, the relationship between the vegetation of this equatorial area and that of the Cathaysian Province during the Early Permian is discussed. Both showed the presence of gigantopterid genera, although there were climatic differences; furthermore, the differences in the species of the group suggest that the two regions may have had quite different vegetation, rather than the shared one traditionally proposed. (C) 2008 International Association for Gondwana Research. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.