Canavalia
Canavalia is a genus of plants in the legume family (Fabaceae) that comprises approximately 73 species of tropical vines. Members of the genus are commonly known as jack-beans. It has a pantropical distribution.

Tauʻolunga · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- jack-beansPBDB
- Sits inside
- FabaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 48 million years on record.
The record covers at least 51.1 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 0 Mya.
11 occurrences of Canavalia 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
11 occurrences- Eocene64%
- Oligocene3%
- Miocene23%
- Pliocene1%
- Pleistocene9%
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
2 formations
- Willwood Formation7
- Lower Churia Formation · Siwalik Group1
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The named rock units Canavalia 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.
Canavalia and its relatives
EoceneWhere Canavalia and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
220 taxa- Alnus7 sites
- Platycarya7 sites
- Dombeya novimundi6 sites
- Lygodium kaulfussi6 sites
- Dicotyledoneae5 sites
- Glyptostrobus europaeus5 sites
- <Wing morphotype>2 sites
- <Wing thesis morphotype>2 sites
- Cedrela2 sites
- Cyathea2 sites
- Salvinia preauriculata2 sites
- Zingiberopsis isonervosa2 sites
- Acer1 site
- Acer bolanderi1 site
- Acer glabroides1 site
- Acer oregonianum1 site
- Acer scottiae1 site
- Aglaia nepalensis1 site
- Albizia siwalica1 site
- Aleurites1 site
- Allantoidiopsis erosa1 site
- Alstonia nepalensis1 site
- Alyxia koilabasensis1 site
- Anacolosa mioluzoniensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Canavalia, 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- Plant and mammal diversity in the Paleocene to Early Eocene of the Bighorn Basin7
- Angiospermous fossil leaves from the Siwalik foreland basins and their palaeoclimatic implications1
- The Prehistory of Eastern Zambia1
- Fossil Plants of the Tertiary Beaverhead Basins in Southwestern Montana1
- The Tertiary flora of the island of Trinidad, B. W. I.1
Each of the 11 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 Canavalia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Tauʻolunga
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Canavalia 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, “Canavalia”
- 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. Adanson 1763