Honorary Chair Sir Edmund Hillary 1919-2008	President Daniel A. Bennett	Honorary President Don Walsh, Ph.D.

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EXPEDITIONS Grant Reports   REPORT—YOUTH ACTIVITY FUND Palms in the Upper Paleocene of the Rancheria River Valley (Guajira Department, Colombia) 2004 By Carolina Gomez-Navarro Expedition Members: Carolina Gomez-Navarro Introduction Palms are a monophyletic group (APG II 2003) currently confined almost exclusively to the tropics (Henderson et al 1995). However, palm records are mainly from high latitudes (Harley & Morley 1995), while the tropical fossil record has been severely unexplored. The objective of this study is determine the natural affinity of fossil palm fragments (inflorescences, fruits and leaves) collected in the Cerrejón Formation of Upper Paleocene (60 million years ago, Bayona et al 2004). The formation outcrops in the Rancherķa river Valley, Guajira department, northeastern Colombia (11°01' N; 72°45' W). To carry out this purpose I described the morphological characters found in the macrofossils and I compared them with those found in herbarium collection specimens. Cuticles were preserved in most specimens because its chemical composition makes them resistant to decay.Cuticles are in intimate association with the epidermal cell walls and preserves much of the characters of the epidermis that are useful taxonomically in some plant groups (Dilcher 1974). I isolated the cuticles from the macrofossils by means of the Schulze method (Kerp & Krings 1999), but almost all fragmented in small pieces that were not useful taxonomically, for this reason, the fossil leaves could not be determined. FULL REPORT in pdf RETURN TO LIST

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