Nigella
Nigella is a genus of about 25 species of annual or biennial plants in the family Ranunculaceae, native to Macaronesia, southern and central Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Common names applied to members of this genus are nigella, devil-in-a-bush or love-in-a-mist.

Ermell · CC BY-SA 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
- PlantaePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 5.4 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 5.333 Mya and 11.7 ka, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Nigella on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
1 occurrences- Pliocene52%
- Pleistocene48%
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 Nigella has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Nigella and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Nigella and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
24 taxa- Acer1 site
- Ajuga reptans1 site
- Azolla1 site
- Boehmeria sp.1 site
- Cornus1 site
- Cyperus1 site
- Hypericum1 site
- Ilex aquifolium1 site
- Juglans1 site
- Liriodendron1 site
- Melissa1 site
- Picea1 site
- Pterocarya1 site
- Pyracantha sp.1 site
- Quercus1 site
- Ranunculus aquatilis1 site
- Ranunculus flammula1 site
- Rubus1 site
- Scirpus1 site
- Selaginella1 site
- Sparganium1 site
- Stratiotes1 site
- Taxus baccata1 site
- Vitis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Nigella, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 content2
Picture of Nigella
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ermell
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- zeynepnurelekcioglu
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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, “Nigella”
- 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 PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753