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Palaeocarpinus is an extinct genus of plants placed in the Betulaceae subfamily Coryloideae. The genus had a wide spread circumboreal distribution, with species found in North America, Europe, and Asia. The first appearance dates to the Early Paleocene and species are spread through the Paleocene and Eocene with the youngest species occurring at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. A total of thirteen species have been named with a small grouping of referred specimens that have not been redescribed in the modern literature. Three species have been named from Asia, in 1996, 1998, and 2000. The type species and the first described species are both from Europe, being named in 1981 and 1859, though a North American species is reported in Northern Europe as well. North America has the largest diversity of the genus, with two groups of species known and several outliers.
Palaeocarpinus species have a Circumboreal distribution across North America, Europe, and Asia. The ages of the species are concentrated in the early Paleogene, with most species being Paleocene to Eocene aged, though the youngest is possibly placed just into the Oligocene. Two occurrences of the genus in Europe date from the Paleocene, while the third is tentatively identified as Eocene. P. laciniata are type locality in strata of the Reading Formation outcropping in the Cold Ash quarry, near Newbury, Berkshire England. While the exact age is uncertain, the general age is late Paleocene (upper Paleocene of Crane, 1981). To the south in France, fossils recovered from the Menat Formation near Menat in Puy-de-Dôme have an agreed upon age of late Paleocene based on associated fossils and volcanic deposits. The northernmost occurrence of Palaeocarpinus are from the arctic Spitzbergen in western Svalbard.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Palaeocarpinus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
