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Fossil Seeds of Nymphaeales from the Tamayama Formation (Futaba Group), Late Cretaceous (Early Santonian) of Northeastern Honshu, Japan

Well‐preserved fossil seeds of an ANITA‐grade angiosperm are described from the Gokurakuzawa locality exposed along the Kobisa River, Fukushima Prefecture, in northeastern Honshu, Japan. Sediments at this locality compose the Tamayama Formation, the uppermost sedimentary unit of the Futaba Group, which is of early Santonian age (ca. 85 million yr BP). On the basis of comparison with extant taxa, these seeds are assigned to Nymphaeales. The presence of unequivocal Nymphaeales in the middle part of the Late Cretaceous contributes to emerging evidence for continuity in the fossil record of this key group of flowering plants from the very earliest phases of angiosperm diversification in the Early Cretaceous through their very extensive representation during the early Cainozoic and up to the Recent. The fossil seeds are assigned here to a new genus of Nymphaeales, Symphaenale futabensis gen. et sp. nov., with a combination of characters seen in the seeds of different extant genera of Nymphaeales.