Gomphonema
Gomphonema is a genus of diatoms belonging to the family Gomphonemataceae.

Alexander Klepnev · CC BY 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- Sits inside
- GomphonemataceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Bacillariophyceae
- Environment
- marine,brackish,freshwaterPBDB, for Bacillariophyceae
Time the record covers
At least 5.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka.
17 occurrences of Gomphonema 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
17 occurrences- Miocene12%
- Pliocene4%
- Pleistocene84%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Gomphonema has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Gomphonema and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Gomphonema and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
119 taxa- Actinocyclus10 sites
- Thalassiosira10 sites
- Neodenticula9 sites
- Nitzschia9 sites
- Paralia sulcata8 sites
- Rhizosolenia8 sites
- Thalassionema8 sites
- Fragilariopsis7 sites
- Navicula7 sites
- Pinnularia7 sites
- Thalassiothrix longissima7 sites
- Bacterosira6 sites
- Chaetoceros6 sites
- Cyclotella5 sites
- Delphineis5 sites
- Cocconeis4 sites
- Cymbella4 sites
- Eunotia4 sites
- Odontella4 sites
- Porosira4 sites
- Proboscia4 sites
- Pyxidicula4 sites
- Coscinodiscus3 sites
- Coscinodiscus marginatus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Gomphonema, 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
8 references- Site U13454
- Site U13393
- A Catalogue of Indian Fossil Plants3
- Site U13432
- Flora of the Latah formation of Spokane, Washington, and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho2
- Site U14451
- Biogeography of the Pliocene and Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Northeastern California and their temporal significance to the development of the Modoc Plateau and Klamath Mountain Region1
- Late Pleistocene stratigraphy at Boliden, northern Sweden1
Each of the 17 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 Gomphonema
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alexander Klepnev
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Gomphonema 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, “Gomphonema”
- 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 itGomphonemataceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ehrenberg 1832