Pitus
Smithsonian Institution · CC0 · via Smithsonian. 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
- CordaitalesPBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta
Time the record covers
At least 6.8 million years on record.
The record covers at least 346.7 Mya to 339.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 358.86 Mya to 323.4 Mya.
8 occurrences of Pitus on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. 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
8 occurrences- Carboniferous100%
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
- Horse Road Sandstone Formation · Upper Old Red Sandstone Group1
- Lydienne Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Pitus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pitus and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Pitus and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
47 taxa- Lepidodendron4 sites
- Lyginorachis4 sites
- Cladoxylon3 sites
- Stenomyelon3 sites
- Alcicornopteris convoluta2 sites
- Dolichosperma2 sites
- Eurystoma2 sites
- Genomosperma2 sites
- Kalymma2 sites
- Lyginorachis papilio2 sites
- Lyrasperma scotica2 sites
- Stigmaria2 sites
- Triradioxylon primaevum2 sites
- Amyelon1 site
- Bensonites1 site
- Botryopteris1 site
- Calamopitys1 site
- Calathospermum1 site
- Clepsydropsis1 site
- Clepsydropsis antiqua1 site
- Diplothmema1 site
- Dolichosperma sexangulatum1 site
- Eccroustosperma langtonense1 site
- Eosperma1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Pitus, 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
4 references- Palaeozoic Palaeobotany of Great Britain3
- Distribution of anatomically-preserved floras in the Lower Carboniferous in Western Europe3
- Observations on the Lower Carboniferous genus Pitus (Witham)1
- the Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables Found in the Carboniferous and Oolitic Deposits of Great Britain1
Each of the 8 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Pitus
- Source
- Smithsonian
- Credit
- Smithsonian Institution
- Licence
- CC0 — this site’s default, not the record’s
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCordaitales through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.