Phyllospadix

Phyllospadix, commonly known as surfgrass, is a genus of seagrass, a flowering plant in the family Zosteraceae, described as a genus in 1840. Phyllospadix grows in marine waters along the coasts of the temperate North Pacific.

Phyllospadix

Jerry Kirkhart · CC BY 2.0 · 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
ZosteraceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 48 million years on record.

The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 0 Mya.

Paleocene — about 0 of 2 occurrencesEocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 2 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 2 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 2 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 2 occurrences57–55 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences55–53 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences53–51 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences51–50 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences50–48 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences1.9–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence48.07 Mya11.7 ka57 Mya0 Mya

2 occurrences of Phyllospadix on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

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.

Phyllospadix and its relatives

Eocene

Where Phyllospadix and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

272 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Phyllospadix, 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 Phyllospadix

Credit
Jerry Kirkhart
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Phyllospadix 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 itZosteraceae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hooker 1838