Eifelian Stage

What happened during this time?

• Fossil assemblages during this time are poor

• Most of Earth was cool and dry, but a narrow band around the equator was tropical

  • Plant fossils from the Eifelian are usually from this equatorial area

• Land plants spread further inland with deeper rooting systems

  • Evidence for large, deeply penetrating root systems extending up to 1 meter into the substrate (Meyer-Berthaud et al., 1999; Driese et al., 1997; Retallack, 1997)

• The protolepidodendrids are appearing larger in the landscape

• The dispersed spore Acinosporites macrospinosus (Richardson, 1965) is found in the Middle Devonian (Wellman, 2022)

  • It has a typical lycopsid spore wall ultrastructure 

  • A. macrospinosus is probably an incipient megaspore from among the first groups of lycopsids to have experimented with a heterosporous reproductive strategy

  • The apical prominence of A. macrospinosus is a forerunner of the pronounced apical prominences (gulas and massas) of later megaspores

• The cladoxylopsids are also getting larger with complicated anatomy, found in Calamophyton

  • The earliest evidence of "forests" comes from a locality in southwest England (Davies et al., 2024)

  • The Calamophyton "trees" would only have stood between around 6.5 and 13 feet (2 to 4 meters) high