Cycas

Cycas is a genus of cycad, and the only genus in the family Cycadaceae with all other genera of cycad being within the Zamiaceae family. Cycas circinalis, a species endemic to India, was the first cycad species to be described in western literature, and is the type species of the genus.

Cycas

SKsiddhartthan · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
CycadaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 26 million years on record.

The record covers at least 37.71 Mya to 11.63 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 7.246 Mya.

Eocene — about 2 of 3 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 3 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 3 occurrencesMiocene49–47 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences47–46 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences46–45 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences45–43 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences43–42 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences42–40 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences40–39 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences39–38 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences38–36 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences35–33 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences12–11 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences11–9.3 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences9.3–7.8 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences7.8–6.4 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences37.71 Mya11.63 Mya48.9 Mya6.4 Mya

3 occurrences of Cycas 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

3 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

1 formation

Guchengzi — 41.84°N, 123.90°E

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The named rock units Cycas has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Cycas and its relatives

Eocene

Where Cycas and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

168 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Cycas, 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

3 references

Each of the 3 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Cycas

Credit
SKsiddhartthan
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Cycas 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 itCycadaceae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753