Astelia
Astelia is a genus of flowering plants in the recently named family Asteliaceae. They are rhizomatous tufted perennials native to various islands in the Pacific, Indian, and South Atlantic Oceans, as well as to Australia and to the southernmost tip of South America. A significant number of the known species are endemic to New Zealand. The species generally grow in forests, swamps and amongst low alpine vegetation; occasionally they are epiphytic.
Uncredited · 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- Sits inside
- AsteliaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 17 million years on record.
The record covers at least 20.45 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 129 ka.
4 occurrences of Astelia on record. 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
4 occurrences- Miocene25%
- Pleistocene75%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Astelia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
262 taxa- Myrtaceae3 sites
- Acacia2 sites
- Apiaceae2 sites
- Asteraceae2 sites
- Banksia2 sites
- Casuarinaceae2 sites
- Chenopodiaceae2 sites
- Coprosma2 sites
- Cunoniaceae2 sites
- Cupressaceae2 sites
- Cyathea2 sites
- Cyperaceae2 sites
- Dicksonia2 sites
- Dodonaea2 sites
- Eucalyptus2 sites
- Gleichenia2 sites
- Grevillea2 sites
- Haloragodendron2 sites
- Leptospermum2 sites
- Liliaceae2 sites
- Lomatia2 sites
- Lycopodium2 sites
- Microcachrys2 sites
- Monotoca2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Astelia, 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
4 references- Miocene Astelia (Asparagales: Asteliaceae) macrofossils from southern New Zealand1
- Early Pleistocene vegetation change in upland south-eastern Australia1
- An Early to Middle Pleistocene Flora of Subalpine Affinities in Lowland Western Tasmania1
- A fossil flora from rafted Plio Pleistocene mudstones at Regatta Point, Tasmania1
Each of the 4 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. 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 Astelia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Astelia 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Astelia”
- 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 itAsteliaceae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Banks et al. 1810