Caesalpinia
Caesalpinia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Fabaceae. It includes 10 species which range from southeastern Mexico through Central America to Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and to Cuba, Hispaniola, and the Bahamas.

Forest & Kim Starr · CC BY 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
- peacock flowerPBDB
- Sits inside
- FabaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 42 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 11.7 ka.
15 occurrences of Caesalpinia on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
15 occurrences- Eocene40%
- Miocene39%
- Pliocene18%
- Pleistocene3%
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
4 formations
- Green River Formation5
- Itahana Formation · Tomioka Group3
- Claiborne Formation1
- Latah Formation1
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The named rock units Caesalpinia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Caesalpinia and its relatives
EoceneWhere Caesalpinia and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
229 taxa- Alnus5 sites
- Phragmites5 sites
- Salix5 sites
- Acer4 sites
- Caesalpinites4 sites
- Cassia4 sites
- Mimosites4 sites
- Sophora4 sites
- Allophylus3 sites
- Cardiospermum3 sites
- Celastrus3 sites
- Eugenia3 sites
- Lindera3 sites
- Ostrya3 sites
- Platanus3 sites
- Populus3 sites
- Pterocarya3 sites
- Rhus3 sites
- Sapindus3 sites
- Acacia2 sites
- Acer protomiyabei2 sites
- Acrostichum hesperium2 sites
- Ailanthus lesquereuxi2 sites
- Aleurites2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Caesalpinia, 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
9 references- Caesalpinia subgenus Mezoneuron (Leguminosae, Caesalpinioideae) from the Tertiary of North America3
- Late Miocene and Pliocene Floras in Central Honshu, Japan3
- Late Paleocene-early Eocene climate changes in southwestern Wyoming: Paleobotanical analysis2
- The Eocene Green River Flora of northwestern Colorado and northeastern Utah2
- Angiospermous fossil leaves from the Siwalik foreland basins and their palaeoclimatic implications1
- A Miocene flora from the gorge of the Yumuri River, Matanzas, Cuba1
- The fossil flora of Potosi, Bolivia1
- Late Tertiary plants from Jancocata, Bolivia1
- Fossil plants from Bolivia and their bearing upon the age of the uplift of the Eastern Andes1
Each of the 15 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 content1
Picture of Caesalpinia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Forest & Kim Starr
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Caesalpinia was found in Sketchfab.
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Caesalpinia”
- 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 EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753