Plant macrofossils

• Fossils big enough to observe with the naked eye
• Seeds, fruits, leaves, flowers, roots, bark
• "megafossils" are things like cones or branches

Representativeness

• Some plants e.g. Typha, Chara produce a large amount of macrofossils even if they are not actually very abundant
• Other plants like Carex lasiocarpa, Potamogeton, Nuphar might be very abundant but don't produce many fossils

Important to consider dispersal, representativeness and preservation when considering plant macrofossils

Applications

• past climate change
• eutrophication history
• dispersal history of plants
• archaeology
• AMS-dating of them - although you need to be careful about contamination from the rest of the carbon in the sediment