Modern Cleared Leaf Database
Comparison of the venation patterns of angiosperm leaves is difficult because the
pigments in the leaf tissue often obscure the finer vein patterns. This problem
can be solved by clearing or x-raying the leaves. Two large collections of cleared
leaves at the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University provide some of the best
comparative material for studying the distribution of leaf vein patterns across
the ~410 families of extant angiosperms. Many of these leaves are shown here for
comparison with the Green River fossil leaves and to illustrate the morphotype categories.
See the Modern Cleared
Leaf Database for more.
The Leaf Architecture Working Group (LAWG) Manual
The Compendium Index of North American Mesozoic and Cenozoic Type Fossil Plants
is a set of approximately 12,000 illustrations (including line drawings, half-tones
and photographs) and 9,800 pages of accompanying text that describe fossil plant
species. This one-of-kind identification tool for fossil plant material organizes
the taxonomic literature of paleobotany into a series of categories based on morphological
features of fossil plants, such as leaf shape or the pattern of venation. The Index
is housed at the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven and may be visited with permission
from the curator, Dr. Leo Hickey.
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