Karkenia

Karkeniaceae is an extinct family in the order Ginkgoales. It contains the single genus Karkenia. It is distinguished by "Ovulate organs consisting of a peduncle and helically arranged, up to about 100 small, orthotropous but incurved ovules; pedicel present; nucellus largely free." Unlike other ginkgoales, the seeds are borne on cone-like aggregations. Ovuluate organs of Karkenia are associated with leaves of the Ginkgoites, Sphenobaiera and Eretmophyllum types. It is known from the Hettangian to Aptian of both Hemispheres.

Karkenia

Peter R. Crane, Pollyanna von Knorring · CC BY 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
KarkeniaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 71 million years on record.

The record covers at least 237 Mya to 165.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 241.464 Mya to 154.8 Mya.

Middle Triassic — about 1 of 2 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 2 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 2 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 2 occurrencesMiddle JurassicLate Jurassic — about 1 of 2 occurrencesLate Jurassic243–240 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences240–237 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences237–234 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168–165 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences165–162 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences162–159 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences159–156 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences156–153 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences237 Mya165.3 Mya243 Mya153 Mya

2 occurrences of Karkenia on record. 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

2 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

2 formations

Talyndzhan Suite — 51.60°N, 133.30°ELong Gully — 44.66°S, 170.16°E

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The named rock units Karkenia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Found in the same rock

36 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Karkenia, 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

2 references

Each of the 2 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 Karkenia

Credit
Peter R. Crane, Pollyanna von Knorring
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Karkenia 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 itKarkeniaceae through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Archangelsky 1965