Synthesis and Heritage Relevance of the Carboniferous floras from the Sierra Norte de Sevilla Geopark

The Viar Basin, the largest of the Carboniferous basins in the Sierra Norte de Sevilla UNESCO Global Geopark, has yielded an important fossil flora. The flora is important stratigraphically and paleoecologically, and the collection sites have significant heritage value as they were studied by eminent geologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The sedimentary succession was deposited in a continental setting and the well-preserved floral remains include a varied fern flora with arborescent pecopterids as well as sphenopsids and pteridosperms. A key feature is the abundance of silicified conifer trunks, which include an almost complete specimen found in 2005, some 17 m in length and weighing 12 tonnes; this is one of the most complete specimens of this type in the European fossil record and constitutes one of the most emblematic fossils of the Geopark.