Cryptantha auriculata
Cryptantha is a genus of flowering plants in the borage family, Boraginaceae. They are known commonly as cat's eyes and popcorn flowers. They are distributed throughout western North America and western South America, but they are absent from the regions in between.

Anthony Valois and the National Park Service · 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.
Time the record covers
At most 7.8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 12.5 Mya and 4.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Cryptantha auriculata on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
2 occurrencesThese 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
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The named rock units Cryptantha auriculata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Cryptantha auriculata and its relatives
MioceneWhere Cryptantha auriculata and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
81 taxa- Berriochloa2 sites
- Aelurodon1 site
- Aepycamelus1 site
- Ambystoma minshalli1 site
- Ambystoma tigrinum1 site
- Ameiseophis robinsoni1 site
- Ammospermophilus junturensis1 site
- Apatosagittarius terrenus1 site
- Aphelops1 site
- Balearica1 site
- Biorbia1 site
- Bufo valentinensis1 site
- Carex1 site
- Carpocyon webbi1 site
- Celtis1 site
- Celtis occidentalis1 site
- Ceratogaulus1 site
- Chrysemys1 site
- Cnemidophorus sexlineatus1 site
- Copemys1 site
- Cormohipparion occidentale1 site
- Cranioceras1 site
- Cupidinimus1 site
- Cynarctus voorhiesi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Cryptantha auriculata, 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
2 references- The geology and paleontology of Ashfall Fossil Beds, a late Miocene (Clarendonian) mass-death assemblage, Antelope County and adjacent Knox County, Nebraska, USA1
- First equid remains from the late Miocene Prolithospermum johnstonii-Nassella pohlii assemblage zone stratotype locality, Ellis County, Kansas1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Cryptantha auriculata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Anthony Valois and the National Park Service
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cryptantha auriculata 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, “Cryptantha”
- 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 itFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.