Alstonia
Alstonia is a widespread genus of evergreen trees and shrubs, of the family Apocynaceae. It was named by Robert Brown in 1811, after Charles Alston (1685–1760), professor of botany at Edinburgh from 1716 to 1760.

Uncredited · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- ApocynaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 10 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 23.04 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 2.58 Mya.
4 occurrences of Alstonia on record. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
4 occurrencesThese 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
3 formations
- Tikak Parbat Formation · Barail Group1
- Lower Churia Formation · Siwalik Group1
- Relu Formation1
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The named rock units Alstonia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
161 taxa- Dillenia palaeoindica2 sites
- Diospyros koilabasensis2 sites
- Entada palaeoscandens2 sites
- Ficus retusoides2 sites
- Actinodaphne palaeoangustifolia1 site
- Aglaia nepalensis1 site
- Albizia1 site
- Albizia palaeolebbek1 site
- Albizia siwalica1 site
- Alsodeia palaeozeylanica1 site
- Alyxia koilabasensis1 site
- Anacolosa mioluzoniensis1 site
- Anisophyllea siwalica1 site
- Anogeissus eosericea1 site
- Anona koilabasensis1 site
- Antidesma miocenica1 site
- Antidesma siwalica1 site
- Apollonias sp.1 site
- Artocarpus nepalensis1 site
- Arytera seriaensis1 site
- Atalantia miocenica1 site
- Avicennia1 site
- Banksia puryearensis1 site
- Berchemia nepalensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Alstonia, 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- Angiospermous fossil leaves from the Siwalik foreland basins and their palaeoclimatic implications1
- Nypa megafossils from the Tertiary sediments of Northeast India1
- A catalogue of Cenozoic megafossil plants in China1
- Fossil flora from the Himalayan foot-hills of Darjeeling District, West Bengal and its palaeoecological and phytogeographical significance1
Each of the 4 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 Alstonia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Alstonia 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, “Alstonia”
- 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 itApocynaceae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brown 1810