Sciadopitys

Sciadopitys, commonly called kōyamaki trees, or umbrella pines, are a genus of conifers with a single extant species, S. vercillata, endemic to Japan. It is the sole living genus in the family Sciadopityaceae. The oldest fossils of Sciadopitys are from the Late Cretaceous of Japan, and the genus was widespread in Laurasia during most of the Cenozoic, especially in Europe until the Pliocene. The genus existed in the present-day United States as recently as the Pliocene.

Sciadopitys

S. Rae from Scotland, UK · CC BY 2.0 · 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
SciadopityaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 165 million years on record.

The record covers at least 168.2 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 170.9 Mya to 774 ka.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 29 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 29 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 29 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 29 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 29 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 29 occurrencesOligocene — about 1 of 29 occurrencesMiocene — about 23 of 29 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 29 occurrencesPleistocene — about 2 of 29 occurrences174–168 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences168–163 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences35–29 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences29–23 Mya — about 1 occurrence23–17 Mya — about 3 occurrences17–12 Mya — about 17 occurrences12–5.8 Mya — about 3 occurrences5.8–0 Mya — about 3 occurrences168.2 Mya2.58 Mya174 Mya0 Mya

29 occurrences of Sciadopitys on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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

29 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.

Found in

5 formations

Calvert — 38.67°N, 76.70°WTokoname — 34.67°N, 136.92°ERamså — 69.18°N, 16.08°ETamiami — 27.34°N, 82.51°WChoptank — 38.16°N, 76.83°W

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The named rock units Sciadopitys has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 23 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Sciadopitys and its relatives

Miocene

Where Sciadopitys and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

319 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 17 sites for Sciadopitys, 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

10 references

Each of the 29 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 Sciadopitys

Credit
S. Rae from Scotland, UK
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Sciadopitys 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 itSciadopityaceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Siebold and Zuccarini 1842