Pinus timleri - an important element in the Pliocene flora of the Hambach opencast mine (RWE Power AG)
Abstrakt
Pinus timleri KINKELIN in ENGELHARDT& KINKELIN is a plant relict, whose descendants in the Canary Islands (P. canariensis C. SM.) and the Himalayas (P. roxburghii SARG.) till now survived.
Its ancestors have been known from the Oligocene and Miocene Europas. Its massive seed cones belong to noteworthy plant fossils occurring the Pliocene of the Hambach opencast mine.
Together with Pinus strozzii GAUDIN in GAUDIN & STROZZI, based on seed cones from the central and eastern Mediterranean, belongs to the same fossil complex, characterized by excentromucronate umbos of seed cones and seeds with adnate wings, belonging to the Sula group (former sect. Sula MAYR or sect.
Pinus subsect. Canarienses LOUDON, recently merged with subsect.
Pinaster LOUDON) of the Diploxylon pines (Pinus L. subgen Pinus).