Botrychium

Botrychium is a genus of ferns, seedless vascular plants in the family Ophioglossaceae. Botrychium species are known as moonworts. They are small, with fleshy roots, and reproduce by spores shed into the air. One part of the leaf, the trophophore, is sterile and fernlike; the other, the sporophore, is fertile and carries the clusters of sporangia or spore cases. Some species only occasionally emerge above ground and gain most of their nourishment from an association with mycorrhizal fungi.

Botrychium

Uncredited · 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
BotrychioideaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 55 million years on record.

The record covers at least 56 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 0 Mya.

Late Cretaceous — about 0 of 10 occurrencesPaleocene — about 1 of 10 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 0 of 10 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 10 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 2 of 10 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 10 occurrencesPleistocene — about 6 of 10 occurrences67–65 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences65–63 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences63–61 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences61–58 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences58–56 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences56–54 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences29–27 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences27–25 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences25–22 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences22–20 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences20–18 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences18–16 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences16–13 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences13–11 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences6.7–4.5 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences4.5–2.2 Mya — about 1 occurrence2.2–0 Mya — about 5 occurrences56 Mya129 ka67 Mya0 Mya

10 occurrences of Botrychium 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

10 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

2 formations

Haughton — 75.41°N, 89.43°WCullen — 52.87°S, 68.41°W

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The named rock units Botrychium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Botrychium and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Botrychium and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

291 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Botrychium, 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

10 references

Each of the 10 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 Botrychium

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Botrychium 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 itBotrychioideae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Swartz 1800