Telopea
The waratah is an Australian-endemic genus of five species of large shrubs to small trees, native to the southeastern parts of Australia. The best-known species in this genus is Telopea speciosissima, which has bright red flowers and is the New South Wales (NSW) state emblem. The waratah is a member of the family Proteaceae, flowering plants (Angiosperms) distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. The key diagnostic feature of Proteaceae is the inflorescence, which is often very large, brightly coloured and showy, consisting of many small flowers densely packed into a compact head or spike. Species of waratah boast such inflorescences ranging from 6–15 cm in diameter with a basal ring of coloured bracts. The leaves are spirally arranged, 10–20 cm long and 2–3 cm broad with entire or serrated margins. The name waratah comes from the Eora Aboriginal people, the traditional owners of the Sydney region.
Uncredited · 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- Sits inside
- ProteaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 31 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 129 ka.
7 occurrences of Telopea on record. 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
7 occurrences- Eocene14%
- Oligocene14%
- Pleistocene71%
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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Telopea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
223 taxa- Lomatia3 sites
- Orites3 sites
- Agastachys2 sites
- Cenarrhenes2 sites
- Ericipites crassiexinus2 sites
- Ericipites scabratus2 sites
- Eucryphia2 sites
- Gleichenia2 sites
- Gothanipollis bassensis2 sites
- Grevillea2 sites
- Hakea2 sites
- Laevigatosporites ovatus2 sites
- Matonisporites ornamentalis2 sites
- Milfordia2 sites
- Myrtaceae2 sites
- Myrtaceidites mesonesus2 sites
- Nothofagidites2 sites
- Nothofagidites asperus2 sites
- Nothofagus2 sites
- Nothofagus gunnii2 sites
- Phyllocladidites mawsonii2 sites
- Phyllocladus2 sites
- Podocarpidites2 sites
- Podocarpus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Telopea, 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
4 references- Early Middle Pleistocene leaves of extinct and extant Proteaceae from western Tasmania, Australia4
- Early Tertiary Macrofossils of Proteaceae from Tasmania1
- Eocene Plant Fossils from the Lefroy and Cowan Paleodrainages, Western Australia1
- A fossil flora from rafted Plio Pleistocene mudstones at Regatta Point, Tasmania1
Each of the 7 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 Telopea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Telopea 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, “Waratah”
- 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 itProteaceae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brown 1811