Alphitonia
Alphitonia is a genus of arborescent flowering plants comprising about 15 species, constituting part of the buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae). They occur in tropical regions of Southeast Asia, Oceania and Polynesia. These are large trees or shrubs. In Australia, they are often called "ash trees" or "sarsaparilla trees". This is rather misleading however; among the flowering plants, Alphitonia is not closely related to the true ash trees, and barely at all to the monocot sarsaparilla vines (Smilax).
Scott Zona · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- RhamnaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 5.3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 0 Mya.
12 occurrences of Alphitonia on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
12 occurrences- Miocene8%
- Pleistocene80%
- Holocene11%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Alphitonia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Alphitonia and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Alphitonia and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
295 taxa- Asteraceae11 sites
- Celtis11 sites
- Eucalyptus11 sites
- Macaranga11 sites
- Mallotus11 sites
- Monolete11 sites
- Poaceae11 sites
- Podocarpus11 sites
- Rapanea11 sites
- Rutaceae11 sites
- Sapindaceae11 sites
- Trema11 sites
- Urticaceae11 sites
- Chenopodiaceae10 sites
- Cyperaceae10 sites
- Elaeocarpus10 sites
- Hydrocotyle10 sites
- Machaerina10 sites
- Acacia9 sites
- Anthoceros9 sites
- Argyrodendron9 sites
- Callitris9 sites
- Dacrydium9 sites
- Dodonaea9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Alphitonia, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
3 references- A complete pollen record of the last 230 ka from Lynch's Crater, north-eastern Australia7
- A Late Pleistocene and Holocene pollen diagram from Lynch’s Crater, northeastern Queensland, Australia4
- A catalogue of Cenozoic megafossil plants in China1
Each of the 12 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Alphitonia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Scott Zona
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Alphitonia was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Alphitonia”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itRhamnaceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Reissek and Endlicher 1840