Xylopia aethiopica
Xylopia aethiopica is an evergreen, aromatic tree, of the Annonaceae family that can grow up to 20m high. It is native to the lowland rainforest and moist fringe forests in the savanna zones of Africa.

Gnagbo Anthelme · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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.
Time the record covers
At most 21 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 2.58 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Xylopia aethiopica on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
1 occurrencesThese 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
- Nkondo Formation · Albertine Group1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Xylopia aethiopica has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Xylopia aethiopica and its relatives
MioceneWhere Xylopia aethiopica and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
17 taxa- Acacia1 site
- Alchornea1 site
- Brachystegia spiciformis1 site
- Bunocharax sp.1 site
- Chrysichthys1 site
- Combretum1 site
- Euphorbia1 site
- Flabelaria paniculata1 site
- Hydrocynus1 site
- Indet. indet.1 site
- Lanistes1 site
- Lates niloticus1 site
- Salacia sp.1 site
- Suidae1 site
- Sus waylandi1 site
- Synodontis1 site
- Tilliacora sp.1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Xylopia aethiopica, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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 1 occurrence 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 Xylopia aethiopica
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Gnagbo Anthelme
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Xylopia aethiopica 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
- 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 itFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.