Taxodium
Searched as Taxodium distichum miocenum. The Paleobiology Database treats Taxodium as the accepted name.
Taxodium is a genus of one to three species of extremely flood-tolerant conifers in the cypress family, Cupressaceae. The name is derived from the Latin word taxus 'yew' and the Greek word εἶδος (eidos) 'similar to'. Within the family, Taxodium is most closely related to Chinese swamp cypress and sugi.

Uncredited · 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
- TaxodioideaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Time the record covers
At most 23 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 56 Mya and 33.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Taxodium on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
2 occurrences- Eocene100%
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.
Taxodium and its relatives
EoceneWhere Taxodium and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
1,800 taxa- Cicatricosisporites dorogensis50 sites
- Coniferales50 sites
- Laevigatosporites50 sites
- Triporopollenites50 sites
- Thompsonipollis magnificus49 sites
- Caryapollenites48 sites
- Pediastrum48 sites
- Casurinidites pulcher47 sites
- Microreticulatisporites47 sites
- Pinuspollenites46 sites
- Liliacidites45 sites
- Momipites43 sites
- Deltoidospora42 sites
- Gleicheniidites42 sites
- Tricolpopollenites42 sites
- Inapertisporites41 sites
- Margocolporites41 sites
- Ovoidites41 sites
- Converrucosisporites40 sites
- Leiotriletes40 sites
- Nudopollis terminalis40 sites
- Osmundacidites40 sites
- Divisisporites39 sites
- Pleuricellaesporites spp.38 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 132 sites for Taxodium, 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Taxodium
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- daicha2021
- 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Taxodium”
- 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 itTaxodioideae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Richard 1810