XVI International Botanical Congess

A plant assemblage from marine beds of central Morocco is associated with tentaculites of Early Emsian age. A taxon-free method using the quantification of plant morphological traits corroborates this age. Many specimens are assignable to two new taxa with unusual branching patterns. Others correspond to classical components of Lower Devonian assemblages. The generic composition of the taphoflora indicates similarities of the Moroccan assemblage with more or less coeval ones from Wales, Belgium and Germany. We suggest that the new assemblage was part of a separate phytogeographic unit comprising both Gondwanan elements and taxa of Laurussian origin in a paleogeographic context in accordance with that proposed by Scotese & McKerrow (1990) for this period.