Plane trees (sometimes called sycamores, though this name refers to several unrelated trees) belong to a group of flowering plants informally known as the basal eudicots. These families were among the most important angiosperms of the Cretaceous, and the plane trees (Platanaceae) are no exception. The lineage first appears in the Early Cretaceous, represented primarily by the extinct genus Sapindopsis, but more modern-looking forms such as Eoplatanus also existed. The latter replaced the former in the Late Cretaceous and gave rise to the important genus Platanites. Today, only one genus (Platanus) remains, which is still widespread throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

Platanites were extinct plane trees with compound leaves consisting of a large terminal leaflet with three lobes (often described as resembling a theropod footprint) and two smaller lateral leaflets with entire or bilobed margins. This leaf arrangement is absent in modern Platanus, which have simple lobed leaves, and suggests that Platanites represents a transitional form between earlier, more primitive genera like Sapindopsis and modern plane trees. Fossils of Platanites are common in wet floodplain deposits from the Late Cretaceous to the Eocene across North America, Europe, and Asia, indicating it was an ecologically successful and adaptable genus.