| Name:
Agathis jurassica
Plantae
Division Pinophyta, Class Pinopsida, Order Pinales, Family Araucariaceae
Geological
Time: Early Middle Jurassic
Size: 130
mm x 165 mm
Fossil Site:
Purlawaugh Formation, Merrygoen Ironstone, Talbragar Fish Beds, Farrs
Hill, Glugong, New South Wales, Australia
 This
fossil comes the most famous mass mortality site in Australia, the
Talbragar Fish Beds. Like the much younger Green River Formation
deposits, large numbers of specimens that evidently died contemporaneously
have been found. The ironstone has preserved all the details of
the structure of the fish with remarkable fidelity. There are a
large number of plants preserved as well, many with highlighting
in silicalike this one. This is a leafy shoot from the Kauri Pine
Agathis jurassica. The genus is something of a “living fossil”
in that Kauris are still in existence today, confined to the last
vestiges of rainforest that remain in Australia. The taxon was quite
widespread in the Jurassic when the climate was more uniformly warm
and wet.
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