Sphaeroplea
Sphaeroplea is a genus of green algae in the family Sphaeropleaceae. It was first circumscribed by the Swedish botanist Carl Adolph Agardh in 1824.

Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt), b. 1825 · No restrictions · 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
- SphaeropleaceaePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 6.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Sphaeroplea on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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- Late 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
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The named rock units Sphaeroplea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Sphaeroplea and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Sphaeroplea and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
38 taxa- Acylomurus silviae2 sites
- Botryococcus2 sites
- Classopollis2 sites
- Cyathidites australis2 sites
- Cyathidites minor2 sites
- Cyathidites rafaeli2 sites
- Gleicheniidites2 sites
- Lusatisporis choiols2 sites
- Peninsulapollis gilli2 sites
- Podocarpidites2 sites
- Rousea patagonica2 sites
- Tricesticillus americanus2 sites
- Arecipites minutiscabratus1 site
- Baculatisporites comaumensis1 site
- Buttinia andreevii1 site
- Clavatimonocolpites sp.1 site
- Constantinisporis jacquei1 site
- Cycadopites follicularis1 site
- Densoisporites velatus1 site
- Dicotetradites1 site
- Dilwynites tuberculatus1 site
- Foraminisporis wonthaggiensis1 site
- Gabonisporis cristata1 site
- Gabonisporis vigorouxii1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Sphaeroplea, 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
1 referenceEach 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Sphaeroplea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt), b. 1825
- Licence
- No restrictions
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Sphaeroplea 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, “Sphaeroplea”
- 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 itSphaeropleaceae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Agardh 1824