Frenelopsis

Frenelopsis is a genus of extinct conifers belonging to the family Cheirolepidiaceae that lived throughout the Cretaceous period ranging from the Berriasian to the Maastrichtian stages, containing a total of 18 species. It is a form classification describing the shoots of the plant, and is accompanied by the genera Classopollis, Classostrobus, and Alvinia. These represent the pollen, male cones, and female cones respectively. They are likely to have been a major source of lignite in Cretaceous deposits.

Frenelopsis

Maryland Geological Survey · No restrictions · 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
CheirolepidiaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 164 million years on record.

The record covers at least 237 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 241.464 Mya to 66 Mya.

Middle Triassic — about 1 of 33 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 33 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 33 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 33 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 17 of 33 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 9 of 33 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 6 of 33 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 33 occurrences245–239 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences239–233 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences166–160 Mya — about 1 occurrence160–154 Mya — about 5 occurrences154–148 Mya — about 6 occurrences148–142 Mya — about 4 occurrences142–135 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences135–129 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences129–123 Mya — about 1 occurrence123–117 Mya — about 3 occurrences117–111 Mya — about 2 occurrences111–105 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences105–99 Mya — about 1 occurrence99–93 Mya — about 2 occurrences93–87 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences87–81 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences81–75 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences75–69 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences69–62 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences237 Mya72.2 Mya245 Mya62 Mya

33 occurrences of Frenelopsis on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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

33 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

18 formations

Guangde — 31.00°N, 118.30°EGuangde — 30.90°N, 119.40°EBantou — 27.80°N, 118.00°EBantou — 26.00°N, 117.40°EBantou — 26.30°N, 116.70°ETebak — 1.50°N, 103.80°ECedar Mountain — 39.07°N, 110.99°WCedar Mountain — 39.15°N, 110.91°WArcillas de Morella — 40.49°N, 0.42°ELengshuiwu — 28.40°N, 117.40°EXiaoxi — 25.00°N, 118.10°EMone — 38.90°N, 141.60°ETochikubo — 37.70°N, 140.90°EGrey Garumnian — 42.18°N, 1.79°ETwin Mountains — 32.28°N, 97.95°WGrès et argiles supérieurs — 39.78°N, 9.23°WCalcari di Monte San Michele — 45.93°N, 13.62°ETlayúa — 18.59°N, 97.90°WLiegende Bankkalk — 48.12°N, 8.87°ELoncoche — 36.53°S, 69.82°WWengen — 46.59°N, 11.74°ERajmahal — 25.24°N, 87.71°E

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The named rock units Frenelopsis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Frenelopsis and its relatives

Late Jurassic

Where Frenelopsis and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

302 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 29 sites for Frenelopsis, 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

20 references

Each of the 33 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. 8 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 Frenelopsis

Credit
Maryland Geological Survey
Licence
No restrictions
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Frenelopsis was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.

MorphoSource 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 itCheirolepidiaceae through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Schenk 1869