Chaleuria

Chaleuria is a genus of extinct plants, found as fossils in New Brunswick, Canada. The rocks in which it was found are of Middle Devonian age (393 to 383 million years ago). One species has been described, Chaleuria cirrosa. It was heterosporous, i.e. the spores were of two distinct sizes. Small spores (microspores) were in the size range 30–48 μm, large spores in the range 60–156 μm. Both kinds of spore were found in the same sporangium, although one size group tended to predominate in each sporangium. The original describers "tentatively" regarded the genus as a primitive member of the progymnosperms.^[1] In 2013, Hao and Xue listed the genus as a progymnosperm.^[2]

Chaleuria Temporal range: Middle Devonian PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Chaleuria cirrosa from the Lower Devonian of New Brunswick
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Clade:	Tracheophytes
Class:	†Progymnospermopsida
Genus:	†Chaleuria H.N.Andrews, Gensel & W.H. Forbes
Species:	†C. cirrosa
Binomial name
†Chaleuria cirrosa H.N.Andrews, Gensel & W.H. Forbes

References

1. Andrews, Henry. N.; Gensel, Patricia G. & Forbes, William H. (1974), "An apparently heterosporous plant from the Middle Devonian of New Brunswick", Palaeontology, 17 (2): 387–408, retrieved 1 November 2019
2. Hao, Shougang & Xue, Jinzhuang (2013), The early Devonian Posongchong flora of Yunnan: a contribution to an understanding of the evolution and early diversification of vascular plants, Beijing: Science Press, p. 329, ISBN 978-7-03-036616-0, retrieved 25 October 2019