Amplectobelua

Amplectobelua is an extinct genus of late Early Cambrian amplectobeluid radiodont, a group of stem arthropods that mostly lived as free-swimming predators during the first half of the Paleozoic Era.

Amplectobelua

Junnn11 · 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
AmplectobeluidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB
Life habit
nektonicPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB

Time the record covers

At least 11 million years on record.

The record covers at least 516 Mya to 504.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 521 Mya to 497 Mya.

Cambrian — about 29 of 29 occurrencesCambrian522–521 Mya — about 2 occurrences521–520 Mya — about 4 occurrences520–519 Mya — about 4 occurrences519–518 Mya — about 4 occurrences518–517 Mya — about 4 occurrences517–517 Mya — about 4 occurrences517–516 Mya — about 3 occurrences516–515 Mya — about 2 occurrences515–514 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences510–509 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences509–508 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences508–507 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences507–507 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences507–506 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences506–505 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences505–504 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences504–503 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences503–502 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences502–502 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences502–501 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences501–500 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences500–499 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences499–498 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences498–497 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences497–497 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences516 Mya504.5 Mya521.5 Mya496.5 Mya

29 occurrences of Amplectobelua on record, most of them in the Cambrian. 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

29 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

6 formations

Yu'anshan — 25.33°N, 103.50°EYu'anshan — 25.55°N, 102.40°EYu'anshan — 24.77°N, 102.58°EYuanshan — 24.81°N, 102.58°EYuanshan — 25.50°N, 102.40°EYuanshan — 25.40°N, 103.38°EYuanshan — 24.84°N, 102.41°EWheeler Shale — 39.36°N, 113.28°WWheeler Shale — 39.29°N, 113.31°WNiutitang — 27.60°N, 106.71°EBurgess Shale — 51.38°N, 116.43°WShuijingtuo — 30.50°N, 111.16°E

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The named rock units Amplectobelua has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Amplectobelua and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Amplectobelua and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

352 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Amplectobelua, 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

10 references

Each of the 29 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. 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 content2

Picture of Amplectobelua

Credit
Junnn11
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial
Commercial use
the licence does not allow 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.

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 itAmplectobeluidae through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hou et al. 1995