Banksia

Banksia is a genus of around 170 species of flowering plants in the family Proteaceae. These Australian wildflowers and popular garden plants are easily recognised by their characteristic flower spikes, and woody fruiting "cones" and heads. Banksias range in size from prostrate woody shrubs to trees up to 30 metres (100 ft) tall. They are found in a wide variety of landscapes: sclerophyll forest, (occasionally) rainforest, shrubland, and some more arid landscapes, though not in Australia's deserts.

Banksia

Bjørn Christian Tørrissen · 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
ProteaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 250 million years on record.

The record covers at least 250.8 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 251.902 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Permian — about 0 of 62 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 5 of 62 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 62 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 62 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 62 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 62 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 62 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 62 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 62 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 62 occurrencesEocene — about 4 of 62 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 62 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 62 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 62 occurrencesPleistocene — about 51 of 62 occurrences257–248 Mya — about 5 occurrences60–51 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences51–43 Mya — about 2 occurrences43–34 Mya — about 2 occurrences34–26 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences26–17 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences17–8.6 Mya — about 1 occurrence8.6–0 Mya — about 51 occurrences250.8 Mya129 ka257 Mya0 Mya

62 occurrences of Banksia on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

62 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

5 formations

Knocklofty — 42.88°S, 147.30°EKnocklofty — 42.79°S, 147.28°EKnocklofty — 43.08°S, 147.28°EKnocklofty — 42.80°S, 147.52°EKnocklofty — 42.96°S, 147.70°EMerlinleigh Sandstone — 24.32°S, 115.19°ERelu — 30.07°N, 100.30°EGuchengzi — 41.84°N, 123.90°EShulan — 44.33°N, 127.00°E

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The named rock units Banksia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 53 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Banksia and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Banksia and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

566 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 41 sites for Banksia, 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

12 references

Each of the 62 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 Banksia

Credit
Bjørn Christian Tørrissen
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
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 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 itProteaceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1782