Aspidaster

Aspidaster

via GBIF · 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
StauranderasteridaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Asteroidea
Life habit
low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Asteroidea
Motility
slow-movingPBDB, for Asteroidea
Vision
limitedPBDB, for Asteroidea
Environment
marinePBDB, for Echinodermata

Time the record covers

At least 49 million years on record.

The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 125.77 Mya to 61.66 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 2 of 6 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 4 of 6 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 6 occurrencesPaleocene127–125 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences125–123 Mya — about 1 occurrence123–120 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences91–89 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences89–87 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences87–85 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences85–83 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences83–80 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences80–78 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences78–76 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences76–74 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences74–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–69 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences69–67 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences67–65 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences65–63 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences63–60 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences121.4 Mya72.2 Mya127 Mya60 Mya

6 occurrences of Aspidaster on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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

6 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

2 formations

Gulpen — 50.73°N, 5.67°EMaastricht — 50.85°N, 6.77°E

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The named rock units Aspidaster has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Aspidaster and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Aspidaster and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

336 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Aspidaster, 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

5 references

Each of the 6 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Aspidaster

Source
GBIF
Credit
via GBIF
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 itStauranderasteridae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. de Loriol 1884