Stratum.black
Pecopteris — Pecopteris
Pecopteris — EncycloPetey, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY SA 3.0

Plant

Pecopteris

True fern foliage

Pecopteris is the fern foliage with small rectangular pinnules attached along their whole base, from the tree fern Psaronius, common at Mazon Creek, St. Clair (Pennsylvania) and in coal-measure shales everywhere. St. Clair specimens are white pyrophyllite films on black shale and are the most decorative Carboniferous ferns; Mazon Creek ones are in ironstone. Both are cheap.

PhylumTracheophyta
ClassPolypodiopsida
OrderMarattiales
FamilyMarattiaceae
GroupPlant
Rank (PBDB)genus· Paleobiology Database
AuthorBrongniart 1822· Paleobiology Database
Classification (PBDB)Pteridophyta › Pteropsida › NO_ORDER_SPECIFIED › NO_FAMILY_SPECIFIED· Paleobiology Database
Range (PBDB)330–2.58 Ma· Paleobiology Database
PBDB occurrences1387· Paleobiology Database

Photographs

Pecopteris — Pecopteris abbreviata Brongniart, 1828 (NHMUK PB OR 41378)
Pecopteris abbreviata Brongniart, 1828 (NHMUK PB OR 41378) — © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, Natural History Museum (London) Data Portal, CC BY 4.0

Age

Formations

Elsewhere

Cite this article

Stratum Study. "Pecopteris" (Taxon). Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-19. https://stratum.black/study/taxa/pecopteris. Accessed 2026-09-20.

BibTeX · CSL-JSON

@misc{stratum-pecopteris,
  title        = {Pecopteris},
  author       = {{Stratum Study}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/study/taxa/pecopteris}},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {Taxon article, Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-19; sources: stratum, pbdb, wikidata, commons, nhm. Accessed 2026-09-20.}
}

Citations carry the pack version and the article's as-of date so they resolve to the same text later. The facts themselves belong to the sources listed below; cite those for the science.