Schizaea

Schizaea is a small genus of specialized ferns in the family Schizaeaceae. Common names include curlygrass fern and comb fern. Some species are very small and inconspicuous, and so may often be overlooked in nature. The genus is distinctive and not at all like the common conception of a fern, though it is still considered a true fern (leptosporangiate). The sterile fronds (trophophylls) are grass-like, and the spore-bearing fertile frond (sporophyll) is similar, but with a small, pinnate fertile segment at its apex. The upper surface of the pinnules bear the sessile capsules. Various of the roughly two dozen species have been reported from widely separated regions, including much of the tropical Old and New World, parts of the Eastern USA, Chile, the Falkland Islands, and various Pacific islands, including several islands of New Caledonia, as well as Australia and New Zealand. In Africa at least two species are endemic to South Africa.

Schizaea

JonRichfield · 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
SchizaeaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 110 million years on record.

The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 125.77 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Early Cretaceous — about 3 of 7 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 2 of 7 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesOligocene — about 1 of 7 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 7 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 7 occurrences128–124 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences124–120 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences120–115 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences115–111 Mya — about 1 occurrence111–107 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences107–103 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences103–98 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences98–94 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences94–90 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences34–30 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences30–26 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences4.3–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence113.2 Mya2.58 Mya128 Mya0 Mya

7 occurrences of Schizaea on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. 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

7 occurrences

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.

Schizaea and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Schizaea and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

170 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Schizaea, 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

Each of the 7 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Schizaea

Credit
JonRichfield
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Schizaea was found in Sketchfab.

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

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 itSchizaeaceae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Smith 1793