Plant remains from Early Cretaceous deposits on the Goban Spur, Bay of Biscay, North Atlantic Ocean, and their palaeoenvironmental significance

Site 549 of the Deep Sea Drilling Project was drilled on the Goban Spur in the Bay of Biscay in 1981. The core recovered from this North Atlantic location included 290 m of Barremian and possibly partly Hauterivian “syn-rift” deposits overlain unconformably by rocks of early Albian age. The number and variety of spores and pollen grains in the palynomorph assemblages and associated palynofacies through these units together with the presence of some pieces of wood, fragments of foliage, and a few megaspores in the lowest part of the Cretaceous succession suggest that the source area vegetation was, at least initially, relatively close to the site of deposition. Ginkgoalean, bennettitalean, and other gymnosperm groups are represented in the plant mesofossil assemblage but most of the fragments of foliage show cheirolepidiaceous characteristics. Five species belonging to this family have been identified and described. Two of these, Frenelopsis atlantica Zhou and Batten and Frenelopsis? alvinii Zhou and Batten, are new and one is unnamed. The composition of the three informally identified suites of spore and pollen assemblages recovered from 49 samples through the Early Cretaceous succession is consistent with age determinations of parts of it determined previously on the basis of dinoflagellate cysts, foraminifera, nannoplankton, and other fossils.