''Dicroidium odontopteroides'' was a common and widespread species of ''

Dicroidium ''Dicroidium'' is an extinct genus of fork-leaved seed ferns that were widely distributed over Gondwana during the Triassic (). Their fossils are known from South Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Madagascar ...

'' known from

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

, Australia,

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

and

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

. The species was first discovered in Triassic sediments of Tasmania and described by the palaeontologist John Morris in 1845.

Description

The leaves of ''Dicroidium odontopteroides'' differ from other species of ''

'' in being unipinnate and having short rounded pinnae.

Whole plant reconstructions

''Dicroidium odontopteroides'' may have been produced by the same plant as '' Umkomasia macleanii'' (ovulate structures) and '' Pteruchus africanus'' (pollen organs), based on cuticular similarities between these leaves and reproductive structures at the Umkomaas locality of South Africa.

References

Triassic plants Pteridospermatophyta {{triassic-plant-stub