Zosterophyllopsida

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.

Zosterophyllopsida

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
ZosterophyllophytaPBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 57 million years on record.

The record covers at least 422.7 Mya to 365.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 426.7 Mya to 358.86 Mya.

Silurian — about 6 of 44 occurrencesSilurianDevonian — about 38 of 44 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 0 of 44 occurrences428–426 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences426–423 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences423–421 Mya — about 3 occurrences421–419 Mya — about 2 occurrences414–412 Mya — about 8 occurrences412–409 Mya — about 6 occurrences409–407 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences407–405 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences405–402 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences402–400 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences400–397 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences397–395 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences395–393 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences393–390 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences390–388 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences388–386 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences386–383 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences383–381 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences381–379 Mya — about 1 occurrence379–376 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences376–374 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences374–372 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences372–369 Mya — about 2 occurrences369–367 Mya — about 3 occurrences367–365 Mya — about 3 occurrences365–362 Mya — about 4 occurrences362–360 Mya — about 4 occurrences360–358 Mya — about 2 occurrences422.7 Mya365.2 Mya428 Mya358 Mya

44 occurrences of Zosterophyllopsida 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

44 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

13 formations

Catskill — 41.79°N, 78.20°WBathurst Island — 75.81°N, 98.44°WBathurst Island — 75.80°N, 98.48°WBathurst 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°WBathurst Island Beds — 75.80°N, 98.40°WEvieux — 50.45°N, 5.05°EEvieux — 50.52°N, 5.37°EEvieux — 50.53°N, 5.57°EEvieux — 50.18°N, 5.38°ETokrau Fm — 47.50°N, 76.00°EEscuminac — 48.13°N, 66.30°WEscuminac — 48.11°N, 66.40°WWutubulake — 46.82°N, 66.62°EStrathmore — 56.25°N, 4.23°WCattaraugus — 42.00°N, 78.48°WYea — 37.22°S, 145.43°EHampshire — 38.91°N, 79.73°WPocono — 41.78°N, 78.25°WPridorozhnaya — 54.47°N, 89.94°E

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The named rock units Zosterophyllopsida has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Zosterophyllopsida and its relatives

Devonian

Where Zosterophyllopsida and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

132 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Zosterophyllopsida, 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

17 references

Each of the 44 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. 5 further references are not listed. 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 Zosterophyllopsida

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

No 3D scan of Zosterophyllopsida was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itZosterophyllophyta through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Foster and Gifford 1974