Cliffortia
Cliffortia, or Caperose is a genus of plants that has been assigned to the rose family, with currently 132 known species. Its species can be found in southern Africa, particularly in the Cape Floristic Region (CFR) where 124 of the species can be found, 109 of which are endemic to the CFR. Most species are ericoid shrubs, some small trees up to 5 m high, others more or less herbaceous groundcover. All are wind pollinated and have separate male and female flowers in the axils of the leaves, mostly individually, sometimes grouped, which may be on the same plant or on separate plants.

Dwergenpaartje · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- caperosePBDB
- Sits inside
- PlantaePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 21 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 2.58 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Cliffortia on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
2 occurrencesThese 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
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The named rock units Cliffortia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Cliffortia and its relatives
MioceneWhere Cliffortia and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
35 taxa- Arecaceae2 sites
- Olea2 sites
- Poaceae2 sites
- Podocarpus2 sites
- Proteaceae2 sites
- Aizoaceae1 site
- Alchornea1 site
- Amaranthaceae1 site
- Anacardiaceae1 site
- Anthospermum1 site
- Apiaceae1 site
- Asteraceae1 site
- Canthium1 site
- Capparidaceae1 site
- Celastraceae1 site
- Celtis1 site
- cf. Marsilia sp.1 site
- Chenopodiaceae1 site
- Crassulaceae1 site
- Croton1 site
- Cupaniedites cf. orthoteichus1 site
- Cyperaceae1 site
- Dissotos sp.1 site
- Ericaceae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Cliffortia, 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
2 references- Pollen evidence for vegetational and climatic change in Southern Africa during the Neogene and Quaternary1
- Palynological and lithological evidence for the Miocene palaeoenvironment in the Saldanha region (South Africa)1
Each of the 2 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 Cliffortia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dwergenpaartje
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cliffortia 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Cliffortia”
- 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 itPlantae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753