Lycopodium

Lycopodium is a genus of clubmosses, also known as ground pines or creeping cedars, in the family Lycopodiaceae. Two very different circumscriptions of the genus are in use. In the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016, Lycopodium is one of nine genera in the subfamily Lycopodioideae, and has from nine to 15 species. In other classifications, the genus is equivalent to the whole of the subfamily, since it includes all of the other genera. More than 40 species are accepted.

Lycopodium

Bernd Haynold · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
Also called
ground pinePBDB
Sits inside
LycopodioideaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Environment
freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Lycopodiophyta

Time the record covers

At least 274 million years on record.

The record covers at least 274.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 290.1 Mya to 0 Mya.

Permian — about 1 of 77 occurrencesPermianEarly Triassic — about 0 of 77 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 77 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 77 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 77 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 77 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 77 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 3 of 77 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 6 of 77 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 77 occurrencesEocene — about 5 of 77 occurrencesOligocene — about 5 of 77 occurrencesMiocene — about 18 of 77 occurrencesPliocene — about 3 of 77 occurrencesPleistocene — about 34 of 77 occurrences296–286 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences286–276 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences276–266 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences168–158 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences158–148 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences148–138 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences138–128 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences128–118 Mya — about 2 occurrences118–108 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences108–99 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences99–89 Mya — about 2 occurrences89–79 Mya — about 1 occurrence79–69 Mya — about 1 occurrence69–59 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences59–49 Mya — about 1 occurrence49–39 Mya — about 2 occurrences39–30 Mya — about 4 occurrences30–20 Mya — about 9 occurrences20–9.9 Mya — about 10 occurrences9.9–0 Mya — about 41 occurrences274.4 Mya11.7 ka296 Mya0 Mya

77 occurrences of Lycopodium on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

77 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

17 formations

Culebra — 9.03°N, 79.63°WSan Sebastian — 18.37°N, 66.19°WGatun — 9.27°N, 79.87°WGatun — 9.13°N, 79.95°WGriman Creek — 29.45°S, 147.77°EGriman Creek — 29.43°S, 147.93°ETuscaloosa — 33.92°N, 87.74°WTuscaloosa — 33.61°N, 87.74°WValentine — 42.00°N, 100.43°WHaughton — 75.41°N, 89.43°WLa Boca — 9.07°N, 79.67°WKovachinskaya — 60.42°N, 165.92°ELoreto — 53.13°S, 70.97°WFoulden Hills Diatomite — 45.53°S, 170.22°ECullen — 52.87°S, 68.41°WBlack Creek — 34.55°N, 80.13°WHelvetiafjellet — 78.10°N, 13.93°ELatah — 47.70°N, 116.75°WAllenby — 49.45°N, 120.57°WCook Mountain — 36.42°N, 89.56°W

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The named rock units Lycopodium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 50 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Lycopodium and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Lycopodium and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

1,003 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 70 sites for Lycopodium, 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

33 references

Each of the 77 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. 21 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 Lycopodium

Credit
Bernd Haynold
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Lycopodium 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 itLycopodioideae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753