Where: Ethiopia (9.1° N, 39.2° E: paleocoordinates 7.7° N, 37.5° E)

• coordinate estimated from map

When: Early/Lower Miocene (23.0 - 16.0 Ma)

• The fossils are constrained in age by 206Pb/238U isotopes from zircons within an ash layer interbedded with the carbonaceous shales. The date on these lacustrine sediments is thus 21.73 ± 0.01 Ma. An ash that occurs within 3m beneath the fossiliferous layers that produced the fossil morphotype provides a maximum age of 21.736 ± 0.054 Ma (Pan et al., 2012; M. Schmitz, pers. comm.).

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: pond; lithified, carbonaceous volcaniclastic sediments and mudstone

Size class: macrofossils

• Here, we describe a new fossil species from the early Miocene (21.73 ± 0.05 Ma) Mush Valley deposits of north-western Ethiopia, which represent the first fossil records of a compound-leaved yam, Dioscoreaceae genus Tacca.

Preservation: mold/impression, adpression, original cellulose

Collection methods: hydrochloric, hydroflouric,

• Repository: Chilga collections, National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Microscope slides prepared from the fossil and herbarium samples are housed in the Roy M. Huffington Depart- ment of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX, USA.

Primary reference: A. Pan, B. Jacobs, and E. Currano. 2014. Dioscoreaceae fossils from the late Oligocene and Miocene Ethiopia. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society (175)17-28 [C. Jaramillo/C. Jaramillo/R. Bush]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taphonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 169321: authorized by Carlos Jaramillo, entered by Carlos Jaramillo on 19.05.2015, edited by Matthew Clapham and Rosemary Bush

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)