Thelypteris

Thelypteris is a genus of ferns in the subfamily Thelypteridoideae, family Thelypteridaceae, order Polypodiales. Two radically different circumscriptions of the genus are in use as of January 2020. In the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016, the genus is a very small one with about two species. In other approaches, the genus is the only one in the subfamily Thelypteridoideae, and so includes between 875 and 1083 species.

Thelypteris

Agnieszka Kwiecień, Nova · 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
ThelypteridoideaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 39 million years on record.

The record covers at least 51.1 Mya to 11.63 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 5.333 Mya.

Paleocene — about 0 of 16 occurrencesEocene — about 14 of 16 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 16 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 16 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 16 occurrences57–55 Mya — about 2 occurrences55–54 Mya — about 5 occurrences54–52 Mya — about 5 occurrences52–50 Mya — about 2 occurrences50–48 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences48–46 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences13–11 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences11–9.6 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences9.6–7.8 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences7.8–6.1 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences6.1–4.3 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences51.1 Mya11.63 Mya57 Mya4 Mya

16 occurrences of Thelypteris on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

16 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

4 formations

Willwood — 44.16°N, 108.55°WWillwood — 44.17°N, 108.48°WWillwood — 44.00°N, 109.00°WWasatch — 41.91°N, 108.00°WWasatch — 42.34°N, 108.16°WChiquimil — 26.88°S, 66.03°WChiquimil — 27.25°S, 66.88°WTatman — 44.00°N, 109.00°W

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The named rock units Thelypteris has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Thelypteris and its relatives

Eocene

Where Thelypteris and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

44 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Thelypteris, 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 16 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 Thelypteris

Credit
Agnieszka Kwiecień, Nova
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Thelypteris 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 itThelypteridoideae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Schmidel 1763