2-panel image showing photos of Green River plant fossils. Panel 1: Photograph of a display of plant fossils made up of a series of rectangular blocks of rock with fossils mounted on a wall. Right: Photograph of a fossil Macginitea leaf, a palmately lobed leaf with five lobes and a toothed margin.

Leaf Margin Analysis

June 24, 2022 A new page on Leaf Margin Analysis (LMA) has been added to the paleoecology chapter. LMA is a technique used to estimate mean annual temperature using fossil leaves of flowering trees and shrubs. Explore here: https://www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/learn/paleoecology/paleoclimate/lma/

Image: Eocene Green River Formation (Parachute Creek Member) plant fossils at display at the Utah State Field House of Natural History in Vernal, Utah. Left: Wall of plant fossils. Right: Specimen of Macginitea, an extinct relative of the modern sycamore (Platanus). Photos by Jonathan R. Hendricks (2014), originally published on Earth@Home (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license).