Linum
Linum (flax) is a genus of approximately 200 species in the flowering plant family Linaceae. They are native to temperate and subtropical regions of the world. The genus includes the common flax, the bast fibre of which is used to produce linen and the seeds to produce linseed oil.

Uncredited · 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
- flaxPBDB
- Sits inside
- PlantaePBDB
Time the record covers
At least 7.1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 7.246 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 11.7 ka.
2 occurrences of Linum on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
2 occurrences- Miocene50%
- Pleistocene50%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Linum 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.
Linum and its relatives
MioceneWhere Linum and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
327 taxa- Betula2 sites
- Cyperaceae2 sites
- Poaceae2 sites
- Polygonum2 sites
- Potamogeton2 sites
- Abies1 site
- Acer1 site
- Acidota crenata1 site
- Aclypea opaca1 site
- Aegialia (Psammoporus) sabuleti1 site
- Agabus (Acatodes) arcticus1 site
- Agabus (Acatodes) congener1 site
- Agabus (Acatodes) sturmii1 site
- Agabus (Gaurodytes) bipustulatus1 site
- Agabus (Gaurodytes) nebulosus1 site
- Agonum sahlbergi1 site
- Agonum sexpunctatum1 site
- Agonum versutum1 site
- Alnus1 site
- Amara1 site
- Amara (Cyrtonotus) torrida1 site
- Amara (Paracelia) quenseli1 site
- Amara erratica1 site
- Amara interstitialis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Linum, 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
2 references- Pharyngeal Teeth, Lateral Ethmoids, and Jaw Teeth of Fishes and Additional Fossils From the Late Miocene (Late Khersonian / Early Maeotian) of Eastern Paratethys (Yalova, Near Istanbul, Turkey)1
- A Late Pleistocene fauna and flora from Upton Warren, Worcestershire1
Each of the 2 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Linum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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, “Linum”
- 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 itPlantae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753