Isoetes

Isoetes, commonly known as the quillworts, is a genus of lycopod. It is the only living genus in the family Isoetaceae and order Isoetales. As of 2016, there were about 200 recognized species, with a cosmopolitan distribution mostly in aquatic habitats but with the individual species often scarce to rare. Species virtually identical to modern quillworts have existed since the Jurassic epoch, though the timing of the origin of modern Isoetes is subject to considerable uncertainty.

Isoetes

Pattavina, Pete · Public Domain · 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
quillwortPBDB
Sits inside
IsoetaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Environment
freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Lycopodiophyta

Time the record covers

At least 121 million years on record.

The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 143.1 Mya to 0 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 0 of 85 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 4 of 85 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 85 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 85 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 85 occurrencesOligocene — about 2 of 85 occurrencesMiocene — about 4 of 85 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 3 of 85 occurrencesPleistocene — about 71 of 85 occurrences146–141 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences141–136 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences136–131 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences131–127 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences127–122 Mya — about 1 occurrence122–117 Mya — about 1 occurrence117–112 Mya — about 1 occurrence112–107 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences107–102 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences102–97 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences34–29 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences29–24 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences24–19 Mya — about 2 occurrences19–15 Mya — about 2 occurrences15–9.7 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences9.7–4.9 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences4.9–0 Mya — about 75 occurrences121.4 Mya11.7 ka146 Mya0 Mya

85 occurrences of Isoetes 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

85 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

4 formations

Cullen — 53.00°S, 68.67°WCullen — 52.87°S, 68.41°WBhuj — 23.32°N, 69.77°EBhuj — 23.29°N, 69.70°ERenova — 45.50°N, 112.50°WWeald Clay — 51.13°N, 0.35°W

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The named rock units Isoetes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 79 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Isoetes and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Isoetes and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

906 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 85 sites for Isoetes, 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

19 references

Each of the 85 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. 7 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 Isoetes

Credit
Pattavina, Pete
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Isoetes 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 itIsoetaceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

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