Data for: Plant community ecology and climate on a volcanic landscape during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum: McAbee fossil beds, British Columbia, Canada

The data provided here is for a comprehensive study of two stratigraphically discrete horizons within the early Eocene lake sediments of the McAbee fossil beds, British Columbia, Canada. Prior work had created a detailed site lithostratigraphy that allowed sampling laterally to be constrained within two individual coeval sedimentary layers, each representing 100-1000 years of forest history and separated by millennia. For this study, plant fossils - principally leaves and other macroplant remains, but also including fossil pollen and spores - were collected using a census protocol where all fossils sufficiently preserved to allow placement into morphotypes - species like taxonomic entities - were counted and measured. These collections allow for a geological snap-shot of ecological time to be assessed, to compare the forest community composition and local climate to be contrasted and compared at two discrete times in the paleohistory the McAbee paleolake, in contrast to prior studies at this fossil site where fossils were collected outside of a site lithostratigraphy. The age of the McAbee fossil beds places them as during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum.
The data includes:
1) a list of all fossil leaves and other plant organs included in a study of the paleoecology and paleoclimate reconstruction of the early Eocene McAbee fossil beds;
2) illustrations and descriptions of all plant fossil morphotypes;
3) all measurements used to reconstruct paleoclimate using leaf physiognomy, applying a new ensemble approach that combined a range of proxies including leaf margin analysis, CLAMP, DiLP (digital leaf physiognomy), and leaf area analysis, further analyzed using a Monte Carlo simulation to arrive at the ensemble or consensus estimate of mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation and other climate variables;
4) counts of all plant macroflora and microflora taxa (macroplant morphotypes and palynomorphs);
5) measurements and results of measuring leaf dimensions to calculate leaf mass per area, a proxy for leaf longevity (i.e., whether broadleaf dicots were seasonally deciduous or evergreen).