Gunnera

Gunnera is the sole genus of herbaceous flowering plants in the family Gunneraceae, which contains 63 species. Some species in this genus, namely those in the subgenus Panke, have extremely large leaves. Species in the genus are variously native to Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, Papuasia, Hawaii, insular Southeast Asia, eastern Africa, and Madagascar. The stalks of some species are edible.

Gunnera

Uncredited · 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
GunneraceaePBDB
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 129 ka.

Eocene — about 1 of 4 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 4 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 1 of 4 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 4 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 occurrences28–26 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences26–25 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences25–23 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences23–21 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences20–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–16 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences15–13 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences13–11 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences3.3–1.6 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.6–0 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences37.71 Mya2.58 Mya49 Mya0 Mya

4 occurrences of Gunnera on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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

4 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

Cullen — 52.87°S, 68.41°W

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The named rock units Gunnera has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Gunnera and its relatives

Miocene

Where Gunnera and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

214 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Gunnera, 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 4 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 Gunnera

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Gunnera 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 itGunneraceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

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