Picea mariana
Picea mariana, the black spruce, is a North American species of spruce tree in the pine family. It is widespread across Canada, found in all 10 provinces and all 3 territories. It is the official tree of Newfoundland and Labrador and is that province's most abundant tree. Its range extends into northern parts of the United States: in Alaska, the Great Lakes region, and the upper Northeast. It is a frequent part of the biome known as taiga or boreal forest.

Daniel Case · 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
- PiceaPBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Time the record covers
At least 5.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 7.246 Mya to 11.7 ka.
2 occurrences of Picea mariana 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
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 Picea mariana 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.
Found in the same rock
79 taxa- Pinus2 sites
- ? Oxyelinae indet.1 site
- Abies balsamea1 site
- Achnanthes1 site
- Acrotrichis1 site
- Agonum1 site
- Alces alces1 site
- Amara1 site
- Amphora1 site
- Anodonta1 site
- Arrhenopeplus tesserula1 site
- Aves1 site
- Bembidion (Peryphus)1 site
- Bembidion (Plataphus)1 site
- Bembidion (Trepanedoris)1 site
- Byrrhus1 site
- Camponotus1 site
- Canis1 site
- Carabus (Aulonocarabus) truncaticollis1 site
- Carex1 site
- Castor canadensis1 site
- Cepheus corae1 site
- Ceratoppia1 site
- Cervalces scotti1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Picea mariana, 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- The Shelton Mastodon Site: Multidisciplinary study of a late Pleistocene (Twocreekan) locality in Southeastern Michigan1
- A Pliocene flora and insect fauna from the Bering Strait region1
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. 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 Picea mariana
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Daniel Case
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Picea mariana 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
- 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 itPicea through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Miller 1768)