Calamitales

Calamitaceae is an extinct family of equisetalean plants related to the modern horsetails, known from the Carboniferous and Permian periods. Some members of this family like Arthropitys attained tree-like stature, with heights over 15 metres (49 ft), with extensive underground rhizomes. They were largely found in wetland environments.

Calamitales

Uncredited · 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
CalamitopsidaPBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 77 million years on record.

The record covers at least 318.7 Mya to 241.464 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 330.3 Mya to 237 Mya.

Carboniferous — about 18 of 21 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 2 of 21 occurrencesPermianEarly Triassic — about 0 of 21 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 1 of 21 occurrencesMiddle TriassicLate Triassic — about 0 of 21 occurrences332–329 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences329–326 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences326–322 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences322–319 Mya — about 1 occurrence319–316 Mya — about 11 occurrences316–313 Mya — about 1 occurrence313–310 Mya — about 1 occurrence310–306 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences306–303 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences303–300 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences300–297 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences297–293 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences293–290 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences290–287 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences242–238 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences238–235 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences318.7 Mya241.464 Mya332 Mya235 Mya

21 occurrences of Calamitales on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. 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

21 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

3 formations

Taiyuan — 40.00°N, 118.00°ESprockhoeveler — 51.38°N, 7.08°ELos Rastros — 30.10°S, 67.99°W

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The named rock units Calamitales has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 17 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Calamitales and its relatives

Carboniferous

Where Calamitales and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.

Found in the same rock

93 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Calamitales, 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

Each of the 21 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 Calamitales

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Calamitales 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 itCalamitopsida through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Eichwald 1852