Acta Palaeobotanica 55(2): 123–147, 2015 DOI: 10.1515/acpa-2015-0009 The Mesozoic megafossil genus Linguifolium Arber 1917 GARY A. PATTEMORE1, JOHN F. RIGBY 2 and GEOFFREY PLAYFORD 3 1 School of Earth Sciences, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia; e-mail:
[email protected] 2 School of Earth, Environmental and Biological Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia; e-mail:
[email protected] 3 School of Earth Sciences, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia; e-mail:
[email protected] Received 24 April 2015; accepted for publication 3 September 2015 ABSTRACT. The plant megafossil genus Linguifolium Arber 1917 is chiefly known from the Middle and Upper Triassic of Gondwana. The range of Linguifolium extended beyond Gondwana by the Late Triassic, persisting there through the earliest Jurassic (Hettangian). The parent plants probably grew in a well-watered, canopied environment. Diagnoses of the genus and four of its species – Linguifolium tenison-woodsii (Shirley 1898) Retallack 1980, L. waitakiense Bell in Bell et al. 1956, L. parvum Holmes & Anderson in Holmes et al. 2010, and L. steinmannii (Solms-Laubach 1899) Arber 1917 – are emended with particular reference to venation and leaf morphology; consequently, the stratigraphic ranges of the species have been more precisely defined. Coalescent venation has previously been reported in some species of Linguifolium and is identified in new material described herein. Although the vast majority of specimens assigned to the genus are from the Upper Triassic, none shows coalescent venation. This character is entirely restricted to the Middle Triassic, in particu- lar to two species: L.