Sphagnum

Sphagnum is a genus of approximately 380 accepted species of mosses, commonly known as sphagnum moss, also bog moss and quacker moss. Accumulations of Sphagnum can store water, since both living and dead plants can hold large quantities of water inside their cells; plants may hold 16 to 26 times as much water as their dry weight, depending on the species. The empty cells help retain water in drier conditions.

Sphagnum

Uncredited · 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
peat mossPBDB
Sits inside
SphagnaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 113 million years on record.

The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 121.4 Mya to 0 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 201 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 201 occurrencesPaleocene — about 15 of 201 occurrencesEocene — about 5 of 201 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 2 of 201 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 11 of 201 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 13 of 201 occurrencesPleistocene — about 151 of 201 occurrences124–120 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences120–116 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences116–111 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences66–62 Mya — about 6 occurrences62–58 Mya — about 6 occurrences58–54 Mya — about 3 occurrences54–50 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences50–45 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences45–41 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences41–37 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences37–33 Mya — about 2 occurrences33–29 Mya — about 1 occurrence29–25 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences25–21 Mya — about 2 occurrences21–17 Mya — about 2 occurrences17–12 Mya — about 4 occurrences12–8.3 Mya — about 2 occurrences8.3–4.1 Mya — about 5 occurrences4.1–0 Mya — about 162 occurrences113.2 Mya11.7 ka124 Mya0 Mya

201 occurrences of Sphagnum 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

201 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

7 formations

Naborton — 31.97°N, 93.55°WDolet Hills — 31.97°N, 93.55°WDolet Hills — 32.01°N, 93.41°WAluginskaya — 60.42°N, 165.92°ETuscahoma — 32.60°N, 88.65°WHaughton — 75.41°N, 89.43°WKovachinskaya — 60.42°N, 165.92°ESierra Madre — 16.68°N, 93.46°W

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The named rock units Sphagnum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 187 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Sphagnum and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Sphagnum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

583 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 197 sites for Sphagnum, 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

19 references

Each of the 201 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. 7 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 content2

Picture of Sphagnum

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

3D model

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

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

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 itSphagnaceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

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