Ptisana
Ptisana is a genus in the eusporangiate fern family Marattiaceae, comprising species historically treated in the genus Marattia. The establishment of this genus follows the 2008 work by Andrew G. Murdock, which supported recognition of this group on the basis of genetic analysis and morphology. Ptisana can be distinguished from Marattia by the presence of distinct sutures at the point of leaflet attachment, deeply cut synangia, and the absence of labiate sporangial apertures. The name Ptisana is derived from the Latin word for pearl barley, an allusion to the shape of the synangia.

Kahuroa · 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
- MarattiaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Time the record covers
At most 8.2 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 121.4 Mya and 113.2 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Ptisana on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
1 occurrences- Early Cretaceous100%
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
1 formation
- Cerro Negro Formation · Byers Group1
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The named rock units Ptisana has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Ptisana and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Ptisana and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
13 taxa- Alienopteris livingstonensis1 site
- Bryopsida1 site
- Cyatheaceae1 site
- Cyatheacidites annulatus1 site
- Cyatheales1 site
- Cycadales1 site
- Eocyathea remesaliae1 site
- Millerocaulis1 site
- Millerocaulis australis1 site
- Phyllopteroides1 site
- Sphenopteris1 site
- Taeniopteris1 site
- Yavanna chimaerica1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Ptisana, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Ptisana
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Kahuroa
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ptisana 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Ptisana”
- 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 itMarattiaceae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Murdock 2008