Palaeobotanical Museum

Employees: Ass.Prof. EWA ZASTAWNIAK (curator), Ms. MARIA LESIAK, M. Sc. (support staff).

The Paleobotanical Museum was developed and supervised since its creation until 1983 by M. Łańcucka-Środoniowa, and since 1984 by E. Zastawniak. The Museum contains contemporary scientific collections for comparison and a small exhibition used for educational purposes.

Modern comparative collections

1. Collection of fruits and seeds (about 26,000 vials in the custody of Ms. Maria Lesiak, M. Sc.).

2. Palynological collection (15,000 specimens in the custody of Dr. Dorota Nalepka and Agnieszka Wacnik M. Sc.)

3. Dendrological collection (about 270 specimens in the custody of Ms. Zofia Tomczyńska, B. Sc.)

4. Collection of moss specimens and tissues of other plants occurring of peat bogs (220 specimens in custody of Ass.Prof. Andrzej Obidowicz).

5. Collection of 550 cuticular specimens in the custody of Grzegorz Worobiec, M. Sc.

6. Herbarium of leaves, 4500 specimens in the custody of Ass.Prof. Ewa Zastawniak and Grzegorz Worobiec, M. Sc.)

Although European species comprise the majority of the collection, species from other regions of the world are also collected as indispensable for the determination of the fossil flora. Species from Africa and Cuba are very well represented in the palynological collection.

Fossil Materials

Macroscopic remains of the floras described by the scientists of the Institute and of the Jagiellonian University are stored in the Museum and are available to the interested parties. The collection also contains materials from some other fossil floras and outside Poland. The collections consist of Mesophytic, Tertiary, and Quaternary floras. The Tertiary and Quaternary collections contain specimens that have already been described and catalogued, as well as those that have been either evaluated on a preliminary basis or have not been studied.

The Mesophytic floras contain materials from several sites in Poland. These are the petrified plant fragments and microscopic specimens of leaves, stems, and other organs of the gymnosperms. Seven nomenclature types are contained in the collection of the Mesozoic floras.

Tertiary floras contain materials from 292 sites, including 156 sites located outside Poland, mainly Europe, Antarctic, and Spitsbergen. These materials consist of various fragments of fossil fungi, mosses, water fern sporas, various fragments of gymnosperms and angiosperms, insect cocoons, coprolites, zoocecidia, samples of sediments, and other specimens that are helpful to palynological and carpological analyses. These specimens belong to 1,139 taxa, mainly species, tardy rarely to genus or families, and very rarely as variety. The Tertiary collection contains 60 nomenclature types.

The Quaternary floras contain materials from 319 sites, including 60 located outside Poland, mainly from Europe but also from China, India, Japan, and Mongolia. The majority of the collection consists of flowering plants, and oosporas of Charophyta, fungal sclerotes, fragments of mosses and liverworts, horsetails (rhizomes), massulae spores and fern leaves, insect cocoons and Bryozoa. A catalogue of taxa, described mostly for species, contains 1,221 cards. Six nomenclature types are in the collection of Quaternary floras.

Documentation

Several card indices containing information on Tertiary floras from Poland and abroad, Quaternary floras of Poland, and bibliography on morphology of sporomorphs and diaspores have been developed in the Department.

Archives that contain unpublished tables of the described sporomorphs in pollen spectra of the studied profiles, protocols of pollen spectra, palaeobotanic expert opinions, as well as materials inherited from the former employees of the Department are in the custody of Ms. Zofia Tomczyńska, A.E.