Microlepia
Microlepia is a genus of ferns in the family Dennstaedtiaceae described as a genus in 1836. Most of the species are native to Asia, with many endemic to China, although a few species occur also in Australia, Africa, the West Indies, Latin America, and various oceanic islands.Species

Forest & Kim Starr · CC BY 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- Sits inside
- DennstaedtiaceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Time the record covers
At least 63 million years on record.
The record covers at least 66 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 83.6 Mya to 0 Mya.
9 occurrences of Microlepia on record. 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
9 occurrences- Late Cretaceous11%
- Eocene7%
- Oligocene4%
- Pleistocene77%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
2 formations
- Horseshoe Canyon Formation1
- Arctowski Cove Formation · Ezcurra Inlet Group1
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The named rock units Microlepia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
103 taxa- Davallia7 sites
- Chenopodiaceae6 sites
- Lepisorus6 sites
- Poaceae6 sites
- Polystichum6 sites
- Amaranthaceae5 sites
- Ardisia5 sites
- Athyrium5 sites
- Cyperaceae5 sites
- Pinus5 sites
- Alnus4 sites
- Angiopteris4 sites
- Asteraceae4 sites
- Carya4 sites
- Cheilanthes4 sites
- Liliaceae4 sites
- Meliaceae4 sites
- Piperaceae4 sites
- Salix4 sites
- Stellaria4 sites
- Typha latifolia4 sites
- Artemisia3 sites
- Betula3 sites
- Cibotium3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Microlepia, 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
3 references- A Catalogue of Fossil Plants from India Part 6: Cenozoic (Quaternary) Palynology and Palaeobotany7
- Taxodium wallisii sp. nov.: First occurence of Taxodium from the Upper Cretaceous1
- Tertiary pollen spectra from the Ezcurra Inlet Group of Admiralty Bay, King George Island (South Shetland Islands, Antartica)1
Each of the 9 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 Microlepia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Forest & Kim Starr
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Microlepia was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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, “Microlepia”
- 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 itDennstaedtiaceae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Presl 1836