The Palaeogene vegetation of peninsular India (Megafossil evidences)

Abstract

The Palaeogene represents the age of spread and diversification of angiosperms in the Indian sub-continent. A comprehensive knowledge of the Palaeogene flora of peninsular India is, therefore, necessary to decipher the history of the modern flora of India. The Palaeogene plant megafossils of this region can broadly be considered under (i) Deccan Intertrappean flora, (ii) Eocene flora of Kutch, (iii) Eocene plant fossils described from the Fuller's earth deposits near Barmer in Rajasthan, and (iv) Eocene plant records from Meghalaya.

The flora as a whole is characteristically tropical in character. It consists of taxa belonging to marine, estuarine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitat with both evergreen and deciduous forms. It is suggestive of an equable warm and moist tropical climate over the whole of peninsular India during the Palaeogene. The existence of this type of climate was the result of (i) a more or less equatorial position of peninsular India during the Palaeocene-Eocene period, and (ii) a warm sea which not only surrounded the peninsula from all the sides but also intruded into the landmass.

Most of the plants recovered from the Palaeogene localities of peninsular India still continue to grow in various forests of this region. Part of this flora, thus, can be considered to be the ancestral stock for the present-day flora of India. Occurrence of some African, Madagascarian, Australian and South American elements in this flora suggests India's past connections with these Gondwanaland countries.