Acer beckianum facts for kids

Acer beckianum is an extinct type of maple tree. We only know about it from a single piece of fossil wood. This special wood was found in central Washington State in the United States. It's one of three ancient maple species discovered from petrified wood in Washington back in 1961.

Where it Lived and What its World Was Like

The first piece of Acer beckianum wood was found by a student named Jay O'Leary in 1954. He discovered it near the Columbia River in a place called Vantage, Washington. The fossilized wood in this area is found between layers of old lava rock.

Scientists used a method called K–Ar dating to figure out the age of these rocks. The older lava layers are about 15.6 million years old. The younger ones are about 15.3 million years old. This means the wood from Vantage is from a time called the Langhian stage of the Miocene epoch. That was about 15 million years ago!

By studying the fossil wood, scientists could guess what the climate was like back then. They found that the average yearly temperature was probably between 15.8 and 16.2 degrees Celsius (60.4 and 61.2 degrees Fahrenheit). That's much warmer than the average temperature in Washington today, which is about 8.4 degrees Celsius (47.1 degrees Fahrenheit).

How Scientists Named This Ancient Maple

Scientists named this species from a small piece of fossilized wood. This piece, about 4 by 2.5 by 3 centimeters (1.6 by 1.0 by 1.2 inches), is called the holotype. It's like the official example of the species. This special fossil is kept in the paleobotanical collections at Harvard College.

Two paleobotanists, Uttam Prakash and Elso Barghoorn, studied this wood. They officially described A. beckianum in 1961 in a science journal. The name beckianum was chosen to honor George F. Beck. He was a person from Yakima, Washington, who was very interested in the petrified wood from Vantage.

Acer beckianum was one of three new maple species that Prakash and Barghoorn described in their paper. The others were A. olearyi and A. puratanum. Based on its wood structure, A. beckianum is most similar to a modern maple called A. negundo.

What the Wood Looked Like

The fossil wood of Acer beckianum shows clear growth rings. These rings are like the ones you see in modern trees. They tell us how the tree grew each year. The rings are separated by one or two layers of strong, flat fibers.

Inside the wood, there are tiny tubes called vessels. These vessels help carry water and nutrients through the tree. Most of them are found alone, and they look oval or round. Sometimes, they are grouped together, usually in twos or threes, but sometimes in fours or fives.

These vessel cells are about 102 to 408 nanometers long. They have simple openings, called perforation plates, that allow fluids to pass from one cell to the next. The wood also has special structures called wood rays. These rays are usually in groups of three and are made of a single type of cell.