Early Tertiary vegetational reconstructions around Nagpur-Chhindwara and Mandla, central India

Abstract

The Deccan Intertrappean flora represents a stage in the vegetational history of India when majority of forms constituting the modern vegetation of this subcontinent had attained a stability in their morphological characters. Most of the information regarding this flora is derived from the assemblages from Nagpur-Chhindwara region and Mandla District in central India. The Nagpur-Chhindwara assemblage is constituted by taxa representing all major groups of the Plant Kingdom belonging to marine, estuarine, fresh water, marshy and terrestrial habitats. The Mandla assemblage, mainly comprising plant fossils from the localities around Shahpura is exclusively angiospermous constituted mostly by palms and arborescent dicotyledons. Based on the available data of fossil plants from these areas, early Tertiary vegetational reconstructions have been attempted. The evidence of the Deccan Intertrappean plant fossils suggests the occurrence of evergreen to semi-evergreen forests in central India during the Early Tertiary, similar to the present-day forests of Western Ghats.