Banksia archaeocarpa

Banksia archaeocarpa is an extinct species of tree or shrub, known only from a fossil Banksia "cone" recovered from rocks known as the Merlinleigh Sandstone from the Middle Eocene, found in the Kennedy Range in Western Australia. Described in 1983 by Ken McNamara, it closely resembles the extant B. attenuata, with the flowers spirally arranged. Some leaves resembling Banksia brownii were discovered at the same site but it is unclear whether or not they were from the same plant.

Banksia archaeocarpa

Cas Liber · 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
BanksiaPBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At most 7.1 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 48.07 Mya and 41.03 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Eocene — about 1 of 1 occurrenceEocene48–48 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences48–48 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences48–47 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences47–47 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences47–47 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences47–47 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences47–46 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences46–46 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences46–46 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences46–46 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences46–45 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences45–45 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences45–45 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences45–45 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences45–44 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences44–44 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences44–44 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences44–43 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences43–43 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences43–43 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences43–43 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences43–42 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences42–42 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences42–42 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences42–42 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences42–41 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences41–41 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences41–41 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences48.6 Mya40.5 Mya

1 occurrence of Banksia archaeocarpa on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

1 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

1 formation

Merlinleigh Sandstone — 24.32°S, 115.19°E

Loading coastlines…

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

Banksia archaeocarpa and its relatives

Eocene

Where Banksia archaeocarpa and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

1 taxon

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Banksia archaeocarpa, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 Banksia archaeocarpa

Credit
Cas Liber
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Banksia archaeocarpa 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 itBanksia through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. McNamara and Scott 1983