Achatella achates

Yale Peabody Museum · CC0 · via GBIF. 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
- AchatellaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Phacopina
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Trilobita
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Trilobita
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Pterygometopidae
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Trilobita
Time the record covers
At most 7.7 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 457.3 Mya and 449.6 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
8 occurrences of Achatella achates on record, most of them in the Ordovician. 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- Ordovician100%
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
5 formations
- Verulam Formation · Simcoe Group3
- Rust Formation2
- Bobcaygeon Formation · Simcoe Group1
- Martinsburg Formation1
- Shipshaw Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Achatella achates has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Achatella achates and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Achatella achates and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
258 taxa- Flexicalymene (Flexicalymene) senaria6 sites
- Isotelus gigas6 sites
- Calyptaulax callicephalus5 sites
- Ceraurus pleurexanthemus5 sites
- Sinuites cancellatus5 sites
- Conularia4 sites
- Cyrtostropha salteri4 sites
- Hormotoma gracilis4 sites
- Hormotoma simplex4 sites
- Lophospira perangulata4 sites
- Paucicrura rogata4 sites
- Rafinesquina4 sites
- Rhynchotrema increbescens4 sites
- Sowerbyella (Sowerbyella) sericea4 sites
- Sowerbyella curdsvillensis4 sites
- Thaleops laurentiana4 sites
- Anazyga recurvirostra3 sites
- Bathyurus (Raymondites) ingalli3 sites
- Ctenodonta nasuta3 sites
- Dekayella3 sites
- Eroicaspira bellicincta3 sites
- Omospira trentonensis3 sites
- Opikina3 sites
- Opikina platys3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Achatella achates, 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
4 references- Palaeozoic geology of the Lake Simcoe Area, Ontario4
- The Walcott-Rust Quarry: Middle Ordovician Trilobite Konservat-Lagerstätten2
- Stratigraphy of the Ordovician of the Lac Saint-Jean and Chicoutimi outliers, Quebec1
- Upper Ordovician tempestites from Swatara Gap, Pennsylvania: depositional processes affecting the sediments and paleoecology of the fossil faunas1
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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Achatella achates
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Yale Peabody Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAchatella through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Billings 1860)