Combretaceae
The Combretaceae, often called the white mangrove family, are a family of flowering plants in the order Myrtales. The family includes about 530 species of trees, shrubs, and lianas in 10 genera. The family includes the leadwood tree, Combretum imberbe. Three genera, Conocarpus, Laguncularia, and Lumnitzera, grow in mangrove habitats (mangals). The Combretaceae are widespread in the subtropics and tropics. Some members of this family produce useful construction timber, such as idigbo from Terminalia ivorensis. The commonly cultivated Quisqualis indica is now placed in the genus Combretum. Many plants in the former Quisqualis genus contain quisqualic acid, a potent nerve toxin.

Meneerke bloem · 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
- MyrtalesPBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 72 million years on record.
The record covers at least 72.2 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 0 Mya.
121 occurrences of Combretaceae on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
121 occurrences- Late Cretaceous2%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
- Eocene16%
- Oligocene4%
- Miocene56%
- Pliocene11%
- Pleistocene9%
- 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
30 formations
- Nkondo Formation · Albertine Group18
- Lower Churia Formation · Siwalik Group6
- Lower Formation · Siwalik Group5
- McBean Formation · Claiborne Group4
- Tipam Formation · Dupitila Group4
- Koobi Fora Formation3
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The named rock units Combretaceae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 48 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Combretaceae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Combretaceae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,728 taxa- Terminalia19 sites
- Acacia18 sites
- Combretum18 sites
- Poaceae12 sites
- Ficus10 sites
- Plantae10 sites
- Brachystegia sp.8 sites
- Cassia8 sites
- Hipparion8 sites
- Salacia sp.8 sites
- Arecaceae7 sites
- Glutoxylon burmense7 sites
- Lates niloticus7 sites
- Malvaceae7 sites
- Rhizophora7 sites
- Zizyphus7 sites
- Annona6 sites
- Asteraceae6 sites
- Bunocharax sp.6 sites
- Calophyllum6 sites
- Chrysichthys6 sites
- Cynometroxylon holdeni6 sites
- Cyperaceae6 sites
- Dipterocarpus siwalicus6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 89 sites for Combretaceae, 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- A Catalogue of Fossil Plants from India Part 4: Cenozoic (Tertiary) Megafossils17
- A Catalogue of Indian Fossil Plants16
- Angiospermous fossil leaves from the Siwalik foreland basins and their palaeoclimatic implications10
- Palaeovegetation (fossil plants) of the Albertine rift valley9
- The Lower Eocene floras of Southeastern North America6
- The Upper Cretaceous and Eocene floras of South Carolina and Georgia5
- A Catalogue of Fossil Plants from India Part 6: Cenozoic (Quaternary) Palynology and Palaeobotany4
- Palaeobiology of the Albertine rift valley,Uganda-Zaire3
- Studies in Neotropical Paleobotany. V. The Lower Miocene Communities of Panama - The Culebra Formation.3
- Koobi Fora Research Project The Fossil Ungulates: Proboscidea, Perissodactyla, Suidae3
- Middle Miocene flora from Siwalik foreland basin of Uttarakhand, India and its phytogeographic and palaeoclimatic implications2
- Equidae of the Albertine rift valley,Uganda2
Each of the 121 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 Combretaceae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Meneerke bloem
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Combretaceae 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
- 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 itMyrtales through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brown 1810