Leptospermum
Leptospermum is a genus of shrubs and small trees in the myrtle family Myrtaceae commonly known as tea trees, although this name is sometimes also used for some species of Melaleuca. Most species are endemic to Australia, with the greatest diversity in the south of the continent, but some are native to other parts of the world, including New Zealand and Southeast Asia. Leptospermums all have five conspicuous petals and five groups of stamens which alternate with the petals. There is a single style in the centre of the flower and the fruit is a woody capsule.

Uncredited · 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
- MyrtaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 645 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
37 occurrences of Leptospermum 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
37 occurrences- Pleistocene98%
- Holocene2%
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.
Leptospermum and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Leptospermum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
364 taxa- Poaceae37 sites
- Cyperaceae36 sites
- Acacia35 sites
- Chenopodiaceae35 sites
- Dodonaea35 sites
- Eucalyptus35 sites
- Myrtaceae35 sites
- Podocarpus35 sites
- Agathis34 sites
- Asteraceae34 sites
- Dacrydium34 sites
- Monolete34 sites
- Proteaceae34 sites
- Araucaria32 sites
- Plantago32 sites
- Cunoniaceae31 sites
- Elaeocarpus30 sites
- Rapanea30 sites
- Casuarinaceae29 sites
- Cyathea29 sites
- Haloragis29 sites
- Araliaceae27 sites
- Syzygium27 sites
- Dicksonia26 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 37 sites for Leptospermum, 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- Early Pleistocene vegetation change in upland south-eastern Australia20
- A complete pollen record of the last 230 ka from Lynch's Crater, north-eastern Australia8
- A Late Pleistocene and Holocene pollen diagram from Lynch’s Crater, northeastern Queensland, Australia6
- Lancefield swamp and the extinction of the Australian megafauna2
- Evidence of Pleistocene plant extinction and diversity from Regatta Point, western Tasmania, Australia1
Each of the 37 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 Leptospermum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Leptospermum 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 itMyrtaceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Forster and Forster 1775