Plantago

Plantago is a genus of about 200 species of flowering plants in the family Plantaginaceae, commonly called plantains or fleaworts. The common name plantain is shared with the unrelated cooking plantain. Most are herbaceous plants, though a few are subshrubs growing to 60 centimetres tall.

Plantago

Iorsh at English Wikipedia · Public Domain · 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
PlantaginaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 15 million years on record.

The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 20.45 Mya to 0 Mya.

Miocene — about 1 of 94 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 4 of 94 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 80 of 94 occurrencesPleistocene21–20 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences20–20 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences19–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–16 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences5.6–4.9 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences4.9–4.2 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences4.2–3.5 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences3.5–2.8 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences2.8–2.1 Mya — about 16 occurrences2.1–1.4 Mya — about 22 occurrences1.4–698 ka Mya — about 21 occurrences698 ka–0 Mya — about 31 occurrences15.98 Mya11.7 ka20.9 Mya0 Mya

94 occurrences of Plantago 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

94 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

4 formations

Olduvai — 2.96°S, 35.31°EDam — 25.98°N, 49.39°ENorwich Crag — 52.31°N, 1.40°EBlue Clay — 40.47°N, 17.30°E

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The named rock units Plantago has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 88 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Plantago and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Plantago and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

921 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 90 sites for Plantago, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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 94 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 content3

Picture of Plantago

Credit
Iorsh at English Wikipedia
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

CT scan

Licence
In Copyright
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Plantago lanceolata · hlu:ccc:723

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
Yulyolya
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itPlantaginaceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

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