Zosterophyllales

The zosterophylls are a group of extinct land plants that first appeared in the Silurian period. The taxon was first established by Banks in 1968 as the subdivision Zosterophyllophytina; they have since also been treated as the division Zosterophyllophyta or Zosterophyta and the class or plesion Zosterophyllopsida or Zosteropsida. They were among the first vascular plants in the fossil record, and had a world-wide distribution. They were probably stem-group lycophytes, forming a sister group to the ancestors of the living lycophytes. By the late Silurian a diverse assemblage of species existed, examples of which have been found fossilised in what is now Bathurst Island in Arctic Canada.

Zosterophyllales

MUSE · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
ZosterophyllopsidaPBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 12 million years on record.

The record covers at least 422.7 Mya to 410.62 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 426.7 Mya to 393.47 Mya.

Silurian — about 1 of 8 occurrencesSilurianDevonian — about 7 of 8 occurrencesDevonian427–426 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences426–425 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences425–424 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences424–423 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences423–422 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences414–412 Mya — about 1 occurrence412–411 Mya — about 2 occurrences411–410 Mya — about 1 occurrence410–409 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences409–408 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences408–407 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences407–405 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences405–404 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences404–403 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences403–402 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences402–401 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences401–400 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences400–399 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences399–397 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences397–396 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences396–395 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences395–394 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences394–393 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences422.7 Mya410.62 Mya427.4 Mya392.8 Mya

8 occurrences of Zosterophyllales on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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

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

Bathurst Island — 76.00°N, 98.00°WBathurst Island — 76.17°N, 98.31°WBathurst Island — 76.19°N, 98.15°WBathurst Island — 76.04°N, 98.18°WStrathmore — 56.25°N, 4.23°WYea — 37.22°S, 145.43°EPridorozhnaya — 54.47°N, 89.94°E

Loading coastlines…

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

Zosterophyllales and its relatives

Devonian

Where Zosterophyllales and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

17 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Zosterophyllales, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

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. 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 Zosterophyllales

Credit
MUSE
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Zosterophyllales 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 itZosterophyllopsida through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bierhorst 1971