Zosteraceae

Zosteraceae is a family of marine perennial flowering plants found in temperate and subtropical coastal waters, with the highest diversity located around Korea and Japan. Most seagrasses complete their entire life cycle under water, having filamentous pollen especially adapted to dispersion in an aquatic environment and ribbon-like leaves that lack stomata. Seagrasses are herbaceous and have prominent creeping rhizomes. A distinctive characteristic of the family is the presence of characteristic retinacules, which are present in all species except members of Zostera subgenus Zostera.

Zosteraceae

Carl Axel Magnus Lindman · 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
AlismatalesPBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 100 million years on record.

The record covers at least 100.5 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 110.1 Mya to 0 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 41 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 36 of 41 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 41 occurrencesEocene — about 2 of 41 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 41 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 41 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 41 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 41 occurrences112–109 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences109–105 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences105–101 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences101–97 Mya — about 3 occurrences97–94 Mya — about 4 occurrences94–90 Mya — about 4 occurrences90–86 Mya — about 4 occurrences86–82 Mya — about 4 occurrences82–79 Mya — about 4 occurrences79–75 Mya — about 4 occurrences75–71 Mya — about 4 occurrences71–67 Mya — about 4 occurrences67–64 Mya — about 1 occurrence56–52 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences52–49 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences49–45 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences45–41 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences41–37 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences3.7–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences100.5 Mya11.7 ka112 Mya0 Mya

41 occurrences of Zosteraceae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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

41 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

4 formations

Izumi — 34.48°N, 135.43°EIzumi — 34.27°N, 134.79°EIzumi — 34.14°N, 134.47°EIzumi — 34.10°N, 134.25°EIzumi — 33.96°N, 134.06°EIzumi — 34.22°N, 133.95°EIzumi — 34.16°N, 133.72°EKitanada — 33.25°N, 132.75°EHookton — 40.98°N, 124.11°WAvon Park — 29.01°N, 82.65°W

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The named rock units Zosteraceae 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.

Zosteraceae and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Zosteraceae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

334 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Zosteraceae, 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

6 references

Each of the 41 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. 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 content1

Picture of Zosteraceae

Credit
Carl Axel Magnus Lindman
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Zosteraceae 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

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 itAlismatales through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Dumortier 1829)