Alsophila

Alsophila is a genus of tree ferns in the family Cyatheaceae. It has also been considered to be a section in the subgenus Cyathea of the genus Cyathea.

Alsophila

Abu Shawka · Public Domain · 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
CyatheaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 174 million years on record.

The record covers at least 174.7 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 184.2 Mya to 0 Mya.

Early Jurassic — about 1 of 11 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 11 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 11 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 11 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 11 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 11 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 11 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 11 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 11 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 5 of 11 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 11 occurrences188–182 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences182–175 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences175–169 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences38–31 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences31–25 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences25–19 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences19–13 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences13–6.3 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences6.3–0 Mya — about 9 occurrences174.7 Mya11.7 ka188 Mya0 Mya

11 occurrences of Alsophila on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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

11 occurrences

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

Gatun — 9.27°N, 79.87°WGatun — 9.13°N, 79.95°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Alsophila has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Alsophila and its relatives

Pliocene

Where Alsophila and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.

Found in the same rock

92 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Alsophila, 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

4 references

Each of the 11 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 Alsophila

Credit
Abu Shawka
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Alsophila 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

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 itCyatheaceae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brown 1810