中国科学院南京地质古生物研究所机构知识库

Mesozoic to Cenozoic petrified woods are very rich and well preserved in the Khorat Plateau, Northeast Thailand, serving as remarkable material for investigations of tropical vegetation history, paleoclimatic evolution, and paleoenvironmental changes. Our recent field survey and investigations have defined about 50 species of fossil wood assigned to 19 genera and I I families from Mesozoic to Cenozoic deposits in this region. These woods are ascribed to two groups, gymnosperms and angiosperms. Among them, about 20 species assigned to 7 genera and 5 families are the first reports of the taxa in Thailand. The fossil wood floras indicate that during the late Mesozoic period, the tropical conifer vegetation in Northeast Thailand was dominated by the family Araucariaceae. From the Miocene to Pleistocene, a tropical climate prevailed in this region with perhaps both deciduous and evergreen broadleaf forests comprising the vegetation.