Composition and Age of the Ayanka Flora (Late Cretaceous, Santonian-Campanian) of the Okhotsk-Chukotka Volcanogenic Belt: Response to the Criticism

The main critical remarks to the paper by M.G. Moiseeva, A.B. Herman, A.B. Sokolova entitled “On the Stratigraphic Setting and Composition of the Ayanka Flora from the Upper Cretaceous of Okhotsk-Chukotka Volcanogenic Belt, Northeastern Russia” (Stratigraphy and Geological Correlation, 2022, vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 76–99), stated by S.V. Shczepetov in his article “On the Ayanka flora from the Upper Cretaceous of Northeastern Russia” (Stratigraphy and Geological Correlation, 2022, vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 113–120), are considered. Additional arguments are given to confirm the conclusions we’ve made earlier: (1) all three taphofloras from the Obryvistaya River basin came from a single straton; it however was named differently on two separate sheets of the 1:200000 State Geological Map: the Auney Member on the northern sheet and the Makkoveyem Formation on the southern one; (2) according to the composition of the plants of these taphofloras, all of them are about of the same age and can be considered as a single Ayanka Flora; (3) the most probable age of the Ayanka Flora is Santonian-Campanian, since it is undoubtedly the most similar to the Santonian-Campanian floras of Northeastern Russia and Northern Alaska.