Elaeagnus
Elaeagnus is a genus of about 90 species of flowering plants in the family Elaeagnaceae. Species of the genus are commonly known as silverberry or oleaster.

Uncredited · 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.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- ElaeagnaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 45 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 0 Mya.
5 occurrences of Elaeagnus on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
5 occurrences- Eocene60%
- Miocene20%
- Pleistocene20%
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
- Keziletuogayi Formation1
- Lawula Formation1
- Allenby Formation · Princeton Group1
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The named rock units Elaeagnus 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.
Elaeagnus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Elaeagnus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
112 taxa- Abies1 site
- Acanthaceae1 site
- Acer1 site
- Alisporites1 site
- Alnus1 site
- Alnus parvifolia1 site
- Amaranthaceae1 site
- Amentotaxus1 site
- Amynodontidae1 site
- Anemia poolensis1 site
- Apiaceae1 site
- Artemisia1 site
- Asteraceae1 site
- Azolla primaeva1 site
- Berhamniphyllum junrongiae1 site
- Betula1 site
- Betula leopoldae1 site
- Betuloideae sp.1 site
- Brontotheriidae1 site
- Bryophyta1 site
- Buxus1 site
- Cadurcodon ardynensis1 site
- Campanulaceae1 site
- Carpinus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Elaeagnus, 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- Systematic descriptions, in Miocene leaves of Elaeagnus (Elaeagnaceae) from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, its modern center of diversity and endemism1
- The Eocene Thomas Ranch flora, Allenby Formation, Princeton, British Columbia, Canada1
- Late Eocene-early Oligocene lithological and biological Stratigraphy in the Burqin region of Xinjiang1
- A Catalogue of Fossil Plants from India Part 6: Cenozoic (Quaternary) Palynology and Palaeobotany1
- Miocenska Flora ze Starych Gliwic na Slasku (Miocene Flora of Stare Gliwice in Upper Silesia)1
Each of the 5 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 Elaeagnus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Elaeagnus 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, “Elaeagnus”
- 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 itElaeagnaceae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753