Desmodium

Desmodium is a genus of plants in the legume family Fabaceae, sometimes called tick-trefoil, tick clover, hitch hikers or beggar lice. There are dozens of species and the delimitation of the genus has shifted much over time. Species are distributed widely – from Quebec to northern Argentina in the Americas, across northern and southern tropical Africa, in the southern Arabian Peninsula, in Myanmar and Thailand, New Guinea, and northern and eastern Australia.

Desmodium

Jeevan Jose, Kerala, India · 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
FabaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 35 million years on record.

The record covers at least 37.71 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Eocene — about 1 of 16 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 16 occurrencesMiocene — about 4 of 16 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 2 of 16 occurrencesPleistocene — about 9 of 16 occurrences49–47 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences47–46 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences46–44 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences44–42 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences42–41 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences41–39 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences39–38 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences25–23 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences23–21 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences20–18 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences18–16 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences15–13 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences13–11 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences11–9.8 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences9.8–8.2 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences8.2–6.5 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences6.5–4.9 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences4.9–3.3 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences3.3–1.6 Mya — about 4 occurrences1.6–0 Mya — about 6 occurrences37.71 Mya2.58 Mya49 Mya0 Mya

16 occurrences of Desmodium on record. 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

16 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

5 formations

Bangmai — 23.90°N, 100.02°EOgawa — 36.42°N, 138.08°EXiaolongtan — 23.81°N, 103.20°ERajdanda — 23.42°N, 84.13°ESanying — 26.42°N, 99.40°E

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The named rock units Desmodium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Found in the same rock

371 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Desmodium, 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

7 references

Each of the 16 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 Desmodium

Credit
Jeevan Jose, Kerala, India
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Desmodium 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 itFabaceae through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Desvaux 1813