Ceratophyllum

Ceratophyllum are a cosmopolitan genus of flowering plants commonly found in ponds, marshes, and quiet streams in tropical and in temperate regions. It is the only extant genus in the family Ceratophyllaceae, itself the only extant family in the order Ceratophyllales. They are often called "hornworts", although the second name is also used for Anthocerotophytes. Coontails lack anything resembling a horn, so to avoid confusion, calling them "hornworts" is strongly discouraged.

Ceratophyllum

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
CeratophyllaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 393 million years on record.

The record covers at least 393.47 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 410.62 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Devonian — about 10 of 83 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 0 of 83 occurrencesPermian — about 0 of 83 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 83 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 83 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 83 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 83 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 83 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 83 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 83 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 3 of 83 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 1 of 83 occurrencesEocene — about 2 of 83 occurrencesOligocene — about 9 of 83 occurrencesMiocene — about 46 of 83 occurrencesPliocene — about 7 of 83 occurrencesPleistocene — about 4 of 83 occurrences419–405 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences405–391 Mya — about 2 occurrences391–377 Mya — about 7 occurrences126–112 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences112–98 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences84–70 Mya — about 2 occurrences70–56 Mya — about 2 occurrences56–42 Mya — about 1 occurrence42–28 Mya — about 3 occurrences28–14 Mya — about 18 occurrences14–0 Mya — about 46 occurrences393.47 Mya129 ka419 Mya0 Mya

83 occurrences of Ceratophyllum on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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

83 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

19 formations

Ukalunda — 20.00°S, 147.00°EFort Union — 46.32°N, 103.86°WSanta Maria di Ciciliano — 42.65°N, 12.49°EDawson Bay — 52.89°N, 101.06°WItahana — 36.25°N, 139.00°EMotojuku — 36.25°N, 138.75°EMiddlegate — 39.25°N, 117.88°WGreen River — 41.10°N, 109.30°WHorseshoe Canyon — 51.47°N, 112.77°WCheyenne Sandstone — 37.45°N, 99.08°WMoniello — 43.63°N, 2.11°ESanta Lucia — 42.84°N, 2.01°EPortilla — 42.83°N, 1.57°ESelscheid — 51.23°N, 7.97°EChercombe Bridge Limestone — 50.53°N, 3.65°WTorringen — 50.98°N, 7.10°ECerro del Pueblo — 25.52°N, 101.32°WShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°EJohn Day — 44.94°N, 120.40°W

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The named rock units Ceratophyllum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 61 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Ceratophyllum and its relatives

Miocene

Where Ceratophyllum and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

515 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Ceratophyllum, 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

27 references

Each of the 83 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. 15 further references are not listed. 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 Ceratophyllum

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ceratophyllum 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 itCeratophyllaceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753