Sakmarian Age

What happened during this time?

Biological

Flora, spore-bearing

• Forests of scale trees, ferns, horsetails, progymnosperms, and seed ferns

• The dominant trees are noeggerathian progymnosperms with an emergent layer of scale trees, such as Sigillaria in some areas

• Extant clubmoss groups, such as the Lycopodiales and Selaginellales, are found in the understory of some forests

• There are abundant marattialean tree ferns, as well as smaller zygopterid ferns

• Sphenophyllophytes are found in the understory and horsetails along rivers and wetlands

• One of the earliest known true ferns, Oligosporangiopteris zhongxiangii, was found in Inner Mongolia, North China (Frojdová et al., 2021)

Flora, seed-bearing

• The Cordaitales diversify in Euramerica, and the Glossopteridales diversify in Gondwana

• Cycads may have been present, but there is debate on the earliest known member of this group

• Giganopterids were among the most striking and important plants of the Cathaysian flora of Sino-Malaya (Wang, 1999)

• Seed ferns, such as the medullosids, callistophytes, and peltasperms, were still on the landscape, surviving from the Carboniferous

  • Medullosids had a  (semi-)self-supporting growth habit with a high water-conducting potential of these plants, thriving under a seasonally-dry climate on wet, rocky soils showing proximity to the groundwater level (Luthardt et al., 2021)