Walchia


Walchia is a fossil conifer, cypress-like genus found in upper Pennsylvanian and lower Permian rocks of Europe and North America. A forest of in-situ Walchia tree-stumps is located on the Northumberland Strait coast at Brule, Nova Scotia.
Besides the Walchia forest, fallen tree trunks, and leaflet impressions, the forest, fossil-rich layer contains numerous, 4-legged, tetrapod fossil trackways.

Individual species

W. hypnoides: from the schists of Lodeve; also copper slates of the Zechstein in Mansfeld.

Monuran trackways

At the same time period of 290 mya, another species was making fossil trackways, now preserved in New Mexico; Walchia leaflets are found in the same fossil layers. The Monuran trackways were made by Permian, wingless insects called monurans, ; the insects' means of locomotion was hopping, then walking.
These 290 mya layers contain footprints of the large Dimetrodon, large/small raindrop impact marks, and also these fossil trackways of insects.