Osmundales
Osmundaceae is a family of ferns containing four to six extant genera and 18–25 known species. It is the only living family of the order Osmundales in the class Polypodiopsida (ferns) or in some classifications the only order in the class Osmundopsida. This is an ancient and fairly isolated group that is often known as the "flowering ferns" because of the striking aspect of the ripe sporangia in Claytosmunda, Osmunda, Osmundastrum, and Plensium. In these genera the sporangia are borne naked on non-laminar pinnules, while Todea and Leptopteris bear sporangia naked on laminar pinnules. Ferns in this family are larger than most other ferns.

Christian Fischer · CC BY-SA 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
- PolypodiidaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Time the record covers
At most 4.5 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 241.464 Mya and 237 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Osmundales on record, most of them in the Middle Triassic. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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- Middle Triassic100%
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 Osmundales has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Osmundales and its relatives
Middle TriassicWhere Osmundales and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Triassic.
Found in the same rock
7 taxa- Calamitales1 site
- Chirotherium ischigualastianum1 site
- Cycadales1 site
- Equisetales1 site
- Myriolepis1 site
- Paleomutella sp.1 site
- Rhexoxilales indet.1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Osmundales, 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 Osmundales
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Christian Fischer
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
MorphoSource 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, “Osmundaceae”
- 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 itPolypodiidae through timeFormations of the Middle TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.