First report of staminate flowers of Calatola (Metteniusales: Metteniusaceae) from the Miocene Mexican amber

Metteniusaceae is a small family with ca. 11 genera that are distributed in the Neotropical and Paleotropical re-gions. The genus Calatola represents the northern limit of the family in the Neotropics. In this work, we describe a new fossil species of Calatola (Metteniusaceae) from the Miocene Chiapas amber, Southern Mexico, based on sev-eral staminate flowers. Calatola verae Estrada-Ruiz, Hernandez-Urban, Rodriguez-Reyes, Ortega-Flores et Hernandez-Damian sp. nov. is characterized by several actinomorphic unisexual flowers belonging to an inflores-cence. It has four petals with adaxially raised midveins, pubescence on both sides of petals, an androecium com-posed of four stamens, each one of the stamens alternate and adnate to the petals at their base, and with anthers dithecal and oblong. This new fossil species of Calatola represents the first macrofossil record of the genus discov-ered in Mexico and based on its fossil flowers or inflorescence, provides evidence for a more extensive distribu-tion of the genus in low latitudes in North America during the Miocene.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In this study, a new fossil species of Calatola (Metteniusaceae) is described from the Miocene Chiapas amber in Southern Mexico. This is the first macrofossil record of the genus discovered in Mexico and provides evidence for a wider distribution of the genus in low latitudes in North America.