"Fern Prarie"

[John Bois <jbois@umd5.umd.edu>]

A week or so ago I noted a paper which, I said, mentioned "fern praries".
On rereading this paper I find no mention of such a term.  But it is very
interesting nevertheless.  The paper is Wing, S. et al _Implications of an
exceptional fossil flora for the Late Cretaceous vegetation_ in Nature Vol
363 1993.  It talks about the Meeteetse formation if Big Cedar Ridge. A
mid-Maastrichtian ash fall preserved this flora, they believe, _in situ_.
Leaves are attached to branches and stems project vertically into the
tuff.  The environment of the day was "subtropical and wet."
It was situated on a deltaic coastal plain  of an epicontinental seaway.

        The paper concludes: high species numbers of angiosperms mislead
us from the reality of dominant ferns and conifers, and that "dicots
played a minor role in the vegetation of northern mid-latitude stable land
surfaces as late as the mid- Maastrichtian.

        I apologize for mis-remembering initially.

        Is it likely that dicots would be better competitors in drier
regimes (savannah-like or prarie-like climates)?