Apocynaceae
Apocynaceae is a family of flowering plants that includes trees, shrubs, herbs, stem succulents, and vines, commonly known as the dogbane family, because some taxa were used as dog poison. Notable members of the family include oleander, dogbanes, milkweeds, wax plants and periwinkles. The family is native to the European, Asian, African, Australian, and American tropics or subtropics, with some temperate members as well. The former family Asclepiadaceae is considered a subfamily of Apocynaceae and contains 348 genera. A list of Apocynaceae genera may be found here.

Stan Shebs · 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- Also called
- dogbanePBDB
- Sits inside
- GentianalesPBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 65 million years on record.
The record covers at least 66 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 0 Mya.
161 occurrences of Apocynaceae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
161 occurrences- Late Cretaceous3%
- Paleocene33%
- Eocene35%
- Oligocene7%
- Miocene13%
- Pliocene2%
- Pleistocene6%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
37 formations
- Sohnari Formation · Ranikot Group23
- Yaw Formation14
- Wasatch Formation11
- Lefipán Formation6
- Bara Formation · Ranikot Group6
- San Fernando Formation5
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The named rock units Apocynaceae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 41 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Apocynaceae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Apocynaceae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
1,943 taxa- Cricotriporites47 sites
- Proxapertites operculatus41 sites
- Longapertites37 sites
- Retistephanocolpites37 sites
- Proxapertites assamicus35 sites
- Longapertites retipilatus26 sites
- "Myricaceoipollenites dubius"25 sites
- Intrareticulitis brevis25 sites
- Cupanieidites23 sites
- Cupanieidites flaccidiformis23 sites
- Triporopollenites20 sites
- Triatriopollenites17 sites
- Alnus16 sites
- Deltoidospora16 sites
- Assamialetes emendatus15 sites
- Dicotyledoneae15 sites
- Laevigatosporites15 sites
- Acrostichum13 sites
- Apocynophyllum13 sites
- Porocolpopollenites aff. ollivierae13 sites
- Rubiaceae13 sites
- Sapotaceoidaepollenites13 sites
- Verrucatosporites13 sites
- Dombeya novimundi12 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 131 sites for Apocynaceae, 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
44 references- Palynological contribution to geologic mapping of coal-bearing upper Paleocene rocks in the lower Indus coal region, Pakistan39
- A proto-monsoonal climate in the late Eocene of Southeast Asia: evidence from a sedimentary record in central Myanmar14
- Middle Paleogene palynology of Central Colombia, South America: A study of pollen and spores from tropical latitudes13
- Late Paleocene-early Eocene climate changes in southwestern Wyoming: Paleobotanical analysis10
- Angiospermous fossil leaves from the Siwalik foreland basins and their palaeoclimatic implications8
- A Catalogue of Fossil Plants from India Part 6: Cenozoic (Quaternary) Palynology and Palaeobotany7
- Die Floren des Haselbacher Serie im Weisselster-Becken (Bezirk Leipzig, DDR)7
- Cretaceous/Paleogene Floral Turnover in Patagonia: Drop in Diversity, Low Extinction, and a Classopollis Spike6
- Pollen from the K–Pg boundary of the La Colonia Formation, Patagonia, Argentina4
- Tertiary plants from Venezuela4
- Late Paleocene fossils from the Cerrejón Formation, Colombia, are the earliest record of Neotropical rainforest3
- Plant and mammal diversity in the Paleocene to Early Eocene of the Bighorn Basin3
Each of the 161 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. 32 further references are not listed. 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 Apocynaceae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Stan Shebs
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Apocynaceae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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, “Apocynaceae”
- 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 itGentianales through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. de Jussieu 1789