Ambocoelia
Searched as Ambocoelia acadica. The Paleobiology Database treats Ambocoelia as the accepted name.

via iDigBio · CC0 · via iDigBio. 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
- AmbocoeliinaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Ambocoelioidea
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Ambocoelioidea
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Ambocoelioidea
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Rhynchonellata
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Lophophorata
Time the record covers
At most 17 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 346.7 Mya and 330.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Ambocoelia on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. 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
2 occurrences- Carboniferous100%
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
1 formation
- Murphy Road Formation · Windsor Group2
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The named rock units Ambocoelia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Ambocoelia and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Ambocoelia and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
1,110 taxa- Mucrospirifer mucronatus72 sites
- Rhipidomella64 sites
- Cyrtina59 sites
- Palaeoneilo58 sites
- Nucleospira56 sites
- Leiorhynchus52 sites
- Productella50 sites
- Eldredgeops rana49 sites
- Camarotoechia46 sites
- Crinoidea44 sites
- Aulocystis43 sites
- Bryozoa42 sites
- Longispina41 sites
- Chonetes40 sites
- Schuchertella38 sites
- Devonochonetes scitulus36 sites
- Douvillina36 sites
- Chonetoidea35 sites
- Fenestella34 sites
- Pterochaenia34 sites
- Greenops boothi33 sites
- Phacops31 sites
- Mediospirifer audaculus30 sites
- Nuculoidea30 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 444 sites for Ambocoelia, and this reads 240 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
1 referenceEach of the 2 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 content2

Picture of Ambocoelia
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAmbocoeliinae through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Hall 1860)