Plant fossils are described from the Cuche Formation, Eastern Cordillera, Colombia in the
area of Floresta. Those identified as Colpodexylon cf. deatsii Banks and cf. Archaeopteris sp. suggest
an earliest Late Devonian (Frasnian) age for the formation. These or similar taxa are also found in
contemporaneous deposits in western Venezuela, and other elements of the Venezuelan flora are
found in a geographically intermediate locality. All three Devonian plant localities in the northwest
of South America are within the Colombian Eastern Cordillera and its northern extension, the
Venezuelan Perijá Range, an area that has been integrated as a part of the so-called ‘Eastern Andean
Terrane’ or ‘Central Andean Province’, supposedly accreted to the autochthonous block of the
Guyana Shield during the early Jurassic or before. Although both invertebrates and plants from this
terrane have strong affinities to North American and European assemblages, and might be interpreted
as implying a Laurussian origin for the Eastern Andean Terrane, the evidence is not yet unequivocal,
with some authors postulating an in situ development of this province.