Anthospermum
Anthospermum is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. It is found in tropical and southern Africa, Madagascar, and the southwestern Arabian Peninsula.

Paul venter · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- PlantaePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 23 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 774 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Anthospermum on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
2 occurrences- Miocene44%
- Pliocene7%
- Pleistocene50%
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
2 formations
- Varswater Formation1
- Olduvai Formation · Vogel River Series Group1
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The named rock units Anthospermum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Anthospermum and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Anthospermum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
39 taxa- Asteraceae2 sites
- Cyperaceae2 sites
- Olea2 sites
- Poaceae2 sites
- Podocarpus2 sites
- Acacia1 site
- Aizoaceae1 site
- Amaranthaceae1 site
- Anthocerotopsida1 site
- Apiaceae1 site
- Arecaceae1 site
- Capparidaceae1 site
- cf. Marsilia sp.1 site
- Chenopodiaceae1 site
- Cliffortia1 site
- Commiphora1 site
- Crassulaceae1 site
- Dodonaea1 site
- Ericaceae1 site
- Gentianaceae1 site
- Hagenia1 site
- Indet. indet.1 site
- Juniperus1 site
- Justicia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Anthospermum, 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
2 references- Pollen evidence for vegetational and climatic change in Southern Africa during the Neogene and Quaternary1
- Geology of the Olduvai Gorge1
Each of the 2 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 Anthospermum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Paul venter
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Anthospermum 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 itPlantae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753