Comptonia

Comptonia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Myricaceae, native to parts of eastern North America. It has one extant (living) species, sweet fern, Comptonia peregrina, and a number of extinct species.

Comptonia

Sten Porse · 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
MyricaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 114 million years on record.

The record covers at least 119.57 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 121.4 Mya to 1.4 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 2 of 68 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 7 of 68 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 68 occurrencesEocene — about 16 of 68 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 19 of 68 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 19 of 68 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 4 of 68 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 68 occurrences124–120 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences120–116 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences116–111 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences111–107 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences107–103 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences103–99 Mya — about 2 occurrences99–95 Mya — about 4 occurrences95–91 Mya — about 1 occurrence66–62 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences62–58 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences58–54 Mya — about 2 occurrences54–50 Mya — about 4 occurrences50–45 Mya — about 3 occurrences45–41 Mya — about 3 occurrences41–37 Mya — about 2 occurrences37–33 Mya — about 2 occurrences33–29 Mya — about 5 occurrences29–25 Mya — about 8 occurrences25–21 Mya — about 6 occurrences21–17 Mya — about 3 occurrences17–12 Mya — about 9 occurrences12–8.3 Mya — about 4 occurrences8.3–4.1 Mya — about 4 occurrences4.1–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences119.57 Mya5.333 Mya124 Mya0 Mya

68 occurrences of Comptonia 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

68 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

16 formations

Odderup — 54.93°N, 10.27°EKlondike Mountain — 48.65°N, 118.73°WAllenby — 49.45°N, 120.57°WChallis Volcanics — 44.37°N, 114.22°WHannuoba — 42.13°N, 117.84°EEifel — 50.10°N, 6.84°EJohn Day — 44.15°N, 120.31°WAldrich Station — 38.49°N, 118.90°WSables de Montormel — 48.97°N, 0.05°WHasler — 55.96°N, 122.03°WGuchengzi — 41.84°N, 123.90°EDalianhe — 46.00°N, 129.00°EXiawuanpu — 27.77°N, 112.50°EShuiquliu — 43.67°N, 126.50°EChu Chua — 51.37°N, 120.15°WAtherfield Clay — 50.61°N, 1.36°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Comptonia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 42 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Comptonia and its relatives

Miocene

Where Comptonia and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

1,037 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 39 sites for Comptonia, 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

29 references

Each of the 68 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. 17 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 Comptonia

Credit
Sten Porse
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Comptonia 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

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 itMyricaceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (L'Héritier de Brutelle 1789)