Solanum

Solanum is a large and diverse genus of flowering plants, which include three food crops of high economic importance: the potato, the tomato and the eggplant. It is the largest genus in the nightshade family Solanaceae, comprising around 1,500 species. It also contains the so-called horse nettles, as well as numerous plants cultivated for their ornamental flowers and fruit.

Solanum

Forest & Kim Starr · CC BY 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
SolanaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 47 million years on record.

The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 0 Mya.

Paleocene — about 0 of 19 occurrencesEocene — about 1 of 19 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 19 occurrencesMiocene — about 4 of 19 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 5 of 19 occurrencesPleistocene — about 9 of 19 occurrences57–55 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences55–53 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences53–51 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences51–50 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences50–48 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–15 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences15–13 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences13–11 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences11–9.5 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences9.5–7.6 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences7.6–5.7 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences5.7–3.8 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences3.8–1.9 Mya — about 5 occurrences1.9–0 Mya — about 8 occurrences48.07 Mya129 ka57 Mya0 Mya

19 occurrences of Solanum on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

19 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

2 formations

Olduvai — 2.99°S, 35.35°EBagshot — 50.70°N, 2.03°W

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The named rock units Solanum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Solanum and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Solanum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

325 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Solanum, 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 19 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 content2

Picture of Solanum

Credit
Forest & Kim Starr
Licence
CC BY 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC0 Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

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 itSolanaceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753