Juncus
Juncus is a genus of monocotyledonous flowering plants, commonly known as rushes. It is the largest genus in the family Juncaceae, containing around 340 species.

James K. Lindsey · 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
- rushPBDB
- Sits inside
- JuncaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 31 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 37 Mya to 1.8 Mya.
4 occurrences of Juncus 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
4 occurrences- Eocene25%
- Miocene47%
- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene25%
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
3 formations
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The named rock units Juncus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Juncus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Juncus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
237 taxa- Bursera2 sites
- Persea2 sites
- Picea2 sites
- Quercus mohavensis2 sites
- Salix2 sites
- Typha lesquereuxi2 sites
- Abies1 site
- Acer florissanti1 site
- Acer macginitiei1 site
- Acer oregonianum1 site
- Ailanthus americana1 site
- Allohippus stenonis1 site
- Alnus1 site
- Amelanchier scudderi1 site
- Amorpha oblongifolia1 site
- Anancus arvernensis1 site
- Angiospermae1 site
- Anomalocardia1 site
- Antholithes amoenus1 site
- Antholithes pediloides1 site
- Apocymospermum sp.1 site
- Araliaceae1 site
- Arbutus mohavensis1 site
- Arbutus prexalapensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Juncus, 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
4 references- Update on the Megafossil Flora of Florissant, Colorado1
- The sedimentology and palaeoecology of the Westleton Member of the Norwich Crag Formation (Early Pleistodene) at Thorigton, Suffolk, England1
- Contributions to the Neogene Paleobotany of Central California1
- A Miocene flora from the western border of the Mohave desert1
Each of the 4 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 Juncus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- James K. Lindsey
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Juncus”
- 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 itJuncaceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753