Komlopteris
Komlopteris is an extinct genus of "seed fern" with possible corystosperm affinities. Fossils have been found across both hemispheres, dating from the latest Triassic to the early Eocene (Ypresian), making it the youngest "seed fern" in the fossil record.

Miriam Slodownik, Robert S. Hill, Stephen McLoughlin · 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
- CorystospermaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Time the record covers
At least 118 million years on record.
The record covers at least 174.7 Mya to 56 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 48.07 Mya.
4 occurrences of Komlopteris on record. 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- Early Jurassic50%
- Middle Jurassic25%
- Eocene25%
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
- Taynton Limestone Formation · Great Oolite Group1
- Mount Flora Formation · Botany Bay Group1
- Macquarie Harbor Formation1
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The named rock units Komlopteris 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.
Found in the same rock
129 taxa- Brachyphyllum2 sites
- Pachypteris2 sites
- Pseudoctenis2 sites
- <Phoipites/Tricolporites spp.>1 site
- Ailanthipites1 site
- Anacolosidites1 site
- Angiosperms indet.1 site
- Apectodinium1 site
- Apteodinium1 site
- Araucaria1 site
- Araucariacites australis1 site
- Araucarioides linearis1 site
- Araucarites1 site
- Archangelskya1 site
- Arecipites1 site
- Baculatisporites1 site
- Baculatisporites comaumensis1 site
- Bandulskaia aestuaria1 site
- Banksieaeidites arcuatus1 site
- Beaupreaidites elegansiformis1 site
- Bluffopollis scabratus1 site
- Bowenia1 site
- Bysmapollis emaciatus1 site
- Ceriops1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Komlopteris, 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- Seed ferns survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction in Tasmania1
- Lower Jurassic floras from Hope Bay and Botany Bay, Antarctica1
- The Middle Jurassic flora from Stonesfield, Oxfordshire, UK1
- Early Jurassic land flora of the Getic Nappe1
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 Komlopteris
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Miriam Slodownik, Robert S. Hill, Stephen McLoughlin
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Komlopteris 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, “Komlopteris”
- 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 itCorystospermaceae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Barbacka 1994