Galium
Galium is a large genus of annual and perennial herbaceous plants in the family Rubiaceae, occurring in the temperate zones of both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Some species are informally known as bedstraw.

Alvesgaspar · 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- Also called
- bedstrawPBDB
- Sits inside
- RubiaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 2.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 11.7 ka.
7 occurrences of Galium on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
7 occurrences- Pliocene43%
- Pleistocene57%
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.
Galium and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Galium and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
309 taxa- Ericaceae6 sites
- Poaceae6 sites
- Alnus5 sites
- Asteraceae5 sites
- Cupressaceae5 sites
- Pinus5 sites
- Plantago5 sites
- Quercus5 sites
- Apiaceae4 sites
- Cyperaceae4 sites
- Fabaceae4 sites
- Oleaceae4 sites
- Polypodium4 sites
- Salix4 sites
- <not identified>3 sites
- Acer3 sites
- Anthoceros3 sites
- Betula3 sites
- Caryophyllaceae3 sites
- Castanea3 sites
- Chenopodiaceae3 sites
- Cistaceae3 sites
- Engelhardia3 sites
- Gleicheniaceae3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Galium, 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- Niche evolution versus niche conservatism and habitat loss determine persistence and extirpation in late Neogene European Fagaceae3
- Site U13861
- Early Pleistocene vegetation change in upland south-eastern Australia1
- An Early to Middle Pleistocene Flora of Subalpine Affinities in Lowland Western Tasmania1
- Late-glacial vegetation and climate at the Manis mastodon site, Olympic Peninsula, Washington1
Each of the 7 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Galium
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alvesgaspar
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Galium 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, “Galium”
- 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 itRubiaceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753