Amorpha

Amorpha is a genus of plants in the pea family, Fabaceae. All the species are native to North America, from southern Canada, most of the United States (US), and northern Mexico. They are commonly known as false indigo. The name Amorpha means "deformed" or "without form" in Greek and was given because flowers of this genus only have one petal, unlike the usual "pea-shaped" flowers of the Faboideae subfamily. Amorpha is missing the wing and keel petals.

Amorpha

Jennifer Anderson. · 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
FabaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 40 million years on record.

The record covers at least 45.9 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 51.1 Mya to 2.58 Mya.

Eocene — about 1 of 6 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 6 occurrencesMiocene — about 4 of 6 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 6 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 6 occurrences52–50 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences50–49 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences49–47 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences47–45 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences22–20 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences20–18 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences17–15 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences15–13 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences13–12 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences12–10 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences10–8.3 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences8.3–6.7 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences6.7–5.0 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences5.0–3.3 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences3.3–1.6 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences45.9 Mya5.333 Mya52 Mya2 Mya

6 occurrences of Amorpha on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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

6 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

6 formations

Buffalo Canyon — 39.20°N, 117.78°WMerhten — 37.61°N, 120.59°WSan Joaquin — 36.00°N, 120.06°WAldrich Station — 38.49°N, 118.90°WBopesta — 35.30°N, 118.50°WGreen River — 39.63°N, 108.15°W

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The named rock units Amorpha has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Amorpha and its relatives

Miocene

Where Amorpha and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

128 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Amorpha, 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

5 references

Each of the 6 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 content2

Picture of Amorpha

Credit
Jennifer Anderson.
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itFabaceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753