Abies

Firs are coniferous trees belonging to the genus Abies in the family Pinaceae. There are approximately 48–65 extant species, found on mountains throughout much of North and Central America, Eurasia, and North Africa. The genus is most closely related to Keteleeria, a small genus confined to eastern Asia.

Abies

Lestat (Jan Mehlich) · 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
Also called
firPBDB
Sits inside
AbietoideaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 236 million years on record.

The record covers at least 237 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 241.464 Mya to 0 Mya.

Middle Triassic — about 1 of 131 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 131 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 131 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 131 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 131 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 131 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 131 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 131 occurrencesEocene — about 7 of 131 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 11 of 131 occurrencesMiocene — about 60 of 131 occurrencesPliocene — about 7 of 131 occurrencesPleistocene — about 36 of 131 occurrences246–238 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences238–230 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences90–82 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences82–74 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences74–66 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences57–49 Mya — about 4 occurrences49–41 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences41–33 Mya — about 3 occurrences33–25 Mya — about 8 occurrences25–16 Mya — about 14 occurrences16–8.2 Mya — about 44 occurrences8.2–0 Mya — about 56 occurrences237 Mya11.7 ka246 Mya0 Mya

131 occurrences of Abies on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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

131 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

23 formations

Chloropagus — 39.58°N, 119.37°WChloropagus — 39.58°N, 119.35°WChloropagus — 39.79°N, 118.94°WBeaverdam — 42.24°N, 114.08°WMiddlegate — 39.25°N, 117.88°WMula — 29.10°N, 100.67°EBuffalo Canyon — 39.20°N, 117.78°WChallis Volcanics — 44.36°N, 114.22°WCoal Valley — 39.52°N, 119.99°WCoal Valley — 39.31°N, 119.65°WAldrich Station — 38.49°N, 118.90°WAllenby — 49.45°N, 120.57°WItahana — 36.25°N, 138.50°EChausuyama — 36.58°N, 138.17°EYadagawa — 35.00°N, 136.00°EHorseshoe Canyon — 51.47°N, 112.77°WPyramid — 39.90°N, 119.55°WJohn Day — 45.00°N, 120.20°WDisaster Peak — 38.50°N, 120.00°WDesert Peak — 39.39°N, 118.97°WSalmon City — 45.18°N, 113.88°WShimonopporo — 42.81°N, 141.54°EYalakdere — 40.61°N, 29.25°ELawula — 29.00°N, 98.00°EShoudai — 34.84°N, 135.72°EOhanapecosh — 45.86°N, 122.21°W

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The named rock units Abies has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 81 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Abies and its relatives

Miocene

Where Abies and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

977 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 65 sites for Abies, 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

44 references

Each of the 131 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. 32 further references are not listed. 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 Abies

Credit
Lestat (Jan Mehlich)
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Abies 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 itAbietoideae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Miller 1754