Cucumis melo

Cucumis melo, also known as melon or true melon, is a species of Cucumis that has been developed into many cultivated varieties. The fruit is a pepo. The flesh is either sweet or bland, with or without an aroma, and the rind can be smooth, ribbed, wrinkled, or netted. The species is sometimes referred to as muskmelon. However, there is no consensus about the usage of this term, as it can also be used as a specific name for the musky netted-rind American cantaloupe, or as a generic name for any sweet-flesh variety such the inodorous smooth-rind honeydew melon.

Cucumis melo

Seth Vidal · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
CucumisPBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At most 12 thousand years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 0 of 1 occurrenceHolocene — about 1 of 1 occurrence17 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence512 ka0 Mya

1 occurrence of Cucumis melo on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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

1 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.

Cucumis melo and its relatives

Holocene

Where Cucumis melo and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

2 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Cucumis melo, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Cucumis melo

Credit
Seth Vidal
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC0 Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

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 itCucumis through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on

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