Thaumatopteris

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- DipteridaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Time the record covers
At least 75 million years on record.
The record covers at least 237 Mya to 161.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 241.464 Mya to 143.1 Mya.
123 occurrences of Thaumatopteris on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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
123 occurrences- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassic48%
- Early Jurassic43%
- Middle Jurassic8%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
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
50 formations
- Cape Stewart Formation10
- Bagong Formation6
- Steierdorf Formation5
- Mine Formation2
- Daqiaode Formation2
- Tumaingela Formation2
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The named rock units Thaumatopteris has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 26 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 50 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Thaumatopteris and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Thaumatopteris and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
311 taxa- Cladophlebis79 sites
- Podozamites61 sites
- Clathropteris56 sites
- Dictyophyllum56 sites
- Pterophyllum54 sites
- Equisetites53 sites
- Neocalamites53 sites
- Todites52 sites
- Nilsonia51 sites
- Phlebopteris42 sites
- Taeniopteris37 sites
- Anomozamites30 sites
- Baiera28 sites
- Sphenobaiera27 sites
- Sagenopteris26 sites
- Phoenicopsis25 sites
- Coniopteris24 sites
- Czekanowskia24 sites
- Pityophyllum23 sites
- Ctenis22 sites
- Otozamites21 sites
- Marattiopsis19 sites
- Hausmannia17 sites
- Carpolithus16 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 96 sites for Thaumatopteris, 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
59 references- The Stratigraphic Tables of Sichuan12
- Stratigraphic relations of the plant beds10
- Triassic Floras of Eurasia8
- Early Jurassic land flora of the Getic Nappe7
- About subdivisions of the Lower Jurassic of Tadzhikistan based on paleobotanic data6
- Late Triassic plants from eastern Xizang6
- Triassic Floras of Eurasia4
- The Stratigraphic Tables of Yunnan4
- The Stratigraphic Tables of Central South China4
- Stratigraphy of the Jurassic coal deposits of Central Tadzhikistan3
- O srodkowoliasowym wieku flory z Chmielowa pod Ostrowcem i jej znaczeniu dla stratygrafii kontynentalnej jury [On the Middle Liassic age of the flora from Chmielow, near Ostrowiec (central Poland) and its significance for stratigraphy of the continental Jurassic]3
- Regional Geology of Hunan Province2
Each of the 123 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. 47 further references are not listed. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Thaumatopteris
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Thaumatopteris 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDipteridaceae through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Goeppert 1841