Walchia
Extinct genus of conifers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walchia is a primitive fossil conifer found in upper Pennsylvanian (Carboniferous) and lower Permian (about 310-290 Mya) rocks of Europe and North America. A forest of in-situ Walchia tree-stumps is located on the Northumberland Strait coast at Brule, Nova Scotia.
| Walchia Temporal range: ~ | |
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| Walchia piniformis | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Clade: | Gymnospermae |
| Division: | Pinophyta |
| Class: | Pinopsida |
| Order: | †Voltziales |
| Family: | †Utrechtiaceae |
| Genus: | †Walchia Sternberg |
| Species | |
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Besides the Walchia forest, fallen tree trunks, and leaflet impressions, the forest, fossil-rich layer contains numerous, 4-legged, tetrapod fossil trackways.
Individual species
Walchia hypnoides: from the schists of Lodeve; also copper slates of the Zechstein in Mansfeld.
Monuran trackways
At the same time period of 290 mya, another species was making fossil trackways, now preserved in New Mexico; Walchia leaflets are found in the same fossil layers. The Monuran trackways were made by Permian, wingless insects called monurans, (meaning "one-tail"); the insects' means of locomotion was hopping, then walking.
These 290 mya layers contain footprints of the large Dimetrodon, large/small raindrop impact marks, and also these fossil trackways of insects.