Bowenia
The genus Bowenia includes two living and two fossil species of cycads in the family Stangeriaceae, sometimes placed in their own family Boweniaceae. They are entirely restricted to Australia.

PeregrinusX · 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
- ZamiaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Time the record covers
At least 10 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 37.71 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 33.9 Mya.
15 occurrences of Bowenia on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
15 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Bowenia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Bowenia and its relatives
EoceneWhere Bowenia and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
194 taxa- Lauraceae8 sites
- Acmopyle glabra7 sites
- Proteaceae7 sites
- Araucarioides6 sites
- Angiosperm <indet. JAE>5 sites
- Podocarpaceae5 sites
- Rhizophoraceae5 sites
- Agathis4 sites
- Angiosperm <indet. JJH>4 sites
- Gymnostoma4 sites
- Monocot <indet. GCE>4 sites
- Prumnopitys4 sites
- Angiosperm <indet. JEA>3 sites
- Aquifoliaceae3 sites
- Araucaria3 sites
- Gnetaceae3 sites
- Haloragacidites harrisii3 sites
- Podocarpidites3 sites
- Angiosperm <indet. JBB>2 sites
- Angiosperm <indet. JED>2 sites
- Angiosperm <indet. JEE>2 sites
- Angiosperm <indet. JJA>2 sites
- Angiosperm <indet. JJE>2 sites
- Araucariacites australis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Bowenia, 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
5 references- Early Eocene Dispersed Cuticles and Mangrove to Rainforest vegetation at Strahan-Regatta Point, Tasmania10
- Two New Species of Bowenia Hook. ex Hook. f. from the Eocene of Eastern Australia2
- Near-tropical Early Eocene terrestrial temperatures at the Australo-Antarctic margin, western Tasmania1
- The Eocene flora of the Anglesea Locality, Victoria1
- The Eocene Megafossil Flora of Nerriga. New South Wales, Australia1
Each of the 15 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 Bowenia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- PeregrinusX
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Bowenia 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, “Bowenia”
- 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 itZamiaceae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hooker and Hooker 1863