The present position and problems of Tertiary Palaeobotany in India

Abstract

Since the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when fossil plants began to be collected in India, almost all the earlier work in Indian palaeobotany was carried out on Mesozoic and Palaeozoic fossils. Progress in Tertiary palaeobotany really started in the early thirties of the present century. The contributions have mainly been on the structure of individual fossils, mostly petrifactions, from the Deccan Intertrappean beds and from the Middle Tertiary strata of Assam and South India. Of late, some papers on the leaf impressions and pollen and spores have also appeared. At the present stage it is desirable that Tertiary plants are studied collectively as floras. This will help in solving a number of problems related to stratigraphy, palaeogeography and palaeoecology during the Tertiary period in India.