Olea

Olea is a genus of flowering plants in the family Oleaceae. It includes 11 species accepted by Plants of the World Online native to warm temperate and tropical regions of the Middle East, southern Europe, Africa, southern Asia, and Australasia. They are evergreen trees and shrubs, with small, opposite, entire leaves. The fruit is a drupe. Leaves of Olea contain trichosclereids.

Olea

Rodrigo Nuno Bragança da Cunha · 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
olivePBDB
Sits inside
OleaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 41 million years on record.

The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 0 Mya.

Late Cretaceous — about 0 of 79 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 79 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 3 of 79 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 79 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 5 of 79 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 5 of 79 occurrencesPleistocene — about 63 of 79 occurrences67–65 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences65–63 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences63–61 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences61–58 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences58–56 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences56–54 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences54–52 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences52–49 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences49–47 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences47–45 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences45–43 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences43–40 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences40–38 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences38–36 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences36–34 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences34–31 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences31–29 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences29–27 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences27–25 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences25–22 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences22–20 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences20–18 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences18–16 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences16–13 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences13–11 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences11–9.0 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences9.0–6.7 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences6.7–4.5 Mya — about 2 occurrences4.5–2.2 Mya — about 10 occurrences2.2–0 Mya — about 59 occurrences41.03 Mya11.7 ka67 Mya0 Mya

79 occurrences of Olea 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

79 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

5 formations

Olduvai — 2.96°S, 35.31°EElandsfontyn — 33.97°S, 18.12°EVarswater — 32.98°S, 18.15°EHeadon Beds — 50.75°N, 1.60°WDeccan Intertrappean — 22.01°N, 79.19°E

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The named rock units Olea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 67 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Olea and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Olea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

901 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 72 sites for Olea, 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

22 references

Each of the 79 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. 10 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 Olea

Credit
Rodrigo Nuno Bragança da Cunha
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Olea was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itOleaceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

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