Potentilla
Potentilla is a genus containing over 500 species of annual, biennial and perennial herbaceous flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae.

Olivier Pichard · 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
- cinquefoilPBDB
- Sits inside
- RosaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 23 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 0 Mya.
58 occurrences of Potentilla on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
58 occurrencesThese 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
3 formations
- Renova Formation · Ruby River Basin Group1
- Hvitland Beds Formation1
- Zanda Formation1
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The named rock units Potentilla has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 55 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Potentilla and its relatives
MioceneWhere Potentilla and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
672 taxa- Carex11 sites
- Salix8 sites
- Betula7 sites
- Poaceae6 sites
- Ranunculus6 sites
- Abies5 sites
- Acer5 sites
- Alnus5 sites
- Eleocharis5 sites
- Picea5 sites
- Potamogeton5 sites
- Quercus5 sites
- Schoenoplectus5 sites
- Acer glabroides4 sites
- Artemisia4 sites
- Asteraceae4 sites
- Berberis4 sites
- Carya4 sites
- Caryophyllaceae4 sites
- Cercidiphyllum4 sites
- Chamaecyparis4 sites
- Chara4 sites
- Cyperaceae4 sites
- Equisetum4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Potentilla, 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
13 references- Tretichnye Flory Zapadnoi Sibiri12
- Die mittelmiozaenen und obermiozaenen Floren aus der Meuroer und Raunoer Folge in der Lausitz. III. Fundstellen und Palaeobiologie11
- Die pliozaenen Floren von Thueringen, Deutsche Demokratische Republik9
- Late Devensian river deposits beneath the floodplain terrace of the River Thames at Abingdon, Berkshire, England7
- A Late Pleistocene fauna and flora from Upton Warren, Worcestershire7
- Fossil Plants of the Tertiary Beaverhead Basins in Southwestern Montana4
- Late-glacial vegetation and climate at the Manis mastodon site, Olympic Peninsula, Washington2
- Pliocene flora and paleoenvironment of Zanda Basin, Tibet, China1
- The Pipe Creek Sinkhole biota, a diverse late Tertiary continental fossil assemblage from Grant County, Indiana1
- Geology of Hvitland beds (Late Pliocene), White Point Lowland, Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories1
- A Catalogue of Fossil Plants from India Part 6: Cenozoic (Quaternary) Palynology and Palaeobotany1
- Interglacial remains of caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and lemming (Dicrostonyx torquatus (?)) from North Greenland1
Each of the 58 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. 1 further reference is 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 Potentilla
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Olivier Pichard
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Potentilla 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Potentilla”
- 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 itRosaceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753