My wife gave me a very cool birthday present, a maple fossil. It's a lovely thing for a maple fan, if you're looking for a present for one, you can't go wrong with this one. :) Here is Acer tricuspidatus. From Brezanky in Czech, miocene period (23 - 5.3 million years old). Amazing! -E
Lucky you! ;-) Do you have any info or links to Acer tricuspidatus? I can't find much on this species with a search engine, any hints on to what it evolved, or where it can be found if it's still alive somewhere?...
I don't know much about it, or not yet anyway. ;) MOW mentions briefly that A. tricuspidatum Braun (1845) is in section Rubra and was found most frequently in the Upper Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 40-16 MYBP (million years before present). I wonder if there are fossil pollen and flowers around which make it possible to classify that precisely. There is also an interesting graph on p. 66 (of my edition) showing evolution of the basil portion of the leaf in A. tricuspidatum during the "Middle European Tertiary", which puts mine late Miocene. To my eye it looks a lot like A. monspessulanum, but clearly that's not meaningful... :) I'm pretty sure it's extinct though! This paper http://bomax.botany.pl/pubs/data/article_pdf?id=77 has some information, and gives the attribution to Bronn (not Braun as in MOW). It states that the contemporary relative is A. rubrum.
