Eocene Green River Tree Catkin P-PCM-16-001

Tree Flower (Catkin) aff. Platycarya sp.
Green River Formation
Parachute Creek Member
Middle Eocene
Uintah County, Utah

This is a beautiful fossil tree flower may be related to the Family Juglandaceae and is a relative to the walnut.  The specimen has excellent detail with two attached catkins and clusters of sessile flowers.  
Fossil examples of this group are represented today by some of our best-known trees with many extant species.  They usually have hard wood, and some have slim elongate clusters of small flowers called catkins.  Catkins belonging to this genus are uncommon in the Green River deposits.

The upper part of the Green River Formation in the eastern Uinta Basin is present in two stratigraphic intervals separated by approximately 250 m of sandstone, siltstone, marlstone and lacustrine limestone (micrite, boundstone, grainstone).  The lower sequence, in the Garden Gulch Member, represents an early lacustrine phase of Lake Uinta and consists of approximately 29 m of interbedded clay-rich oil shale, gastropod grainstone and packstone, ostracod grainstone, algal boundstone and calcareous silty claystone. Fish fossils, plant debris, and pelecypods are locally present. Detrital clay minerals (smectite, chlorite and illite) are common and calcite abundance is greater than dolomite. The second oil-shale interval is located in the upper 10 m of the Parachute Creek Member. The Mahogany ledge crops out in the lower 15 m of this sequence. Oil shale in the Parachute Creek Member is a kerogenous dolomicrite (dolomite greater than calcite). Analcime, quartz, K-feldspar, and albite are also common. Illite is the dominant clay mineral. Fossils include insects, insect larvae, and plant debris. Marlstone and volcanic tuff are interstratified with oil shale.