Aspidochirotida
Synallactida is a rankless clade of sea cucumbers, but is referred to as an order. Taxa within Synallactida were previously classified in an order called Aspidochirotida, which was determined to be polyphyletic in 2017.

laszlo-photo · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- HolothuroideaPBDB
- Diet
- deposit feeder, suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Holothuroidea
- Environment
- marinePBDB
Time the record covers
At least 442 million years on record.
The record covers at least 443.1 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 449.5 Mya to 11.7 ka.
42 occurrences of Aspidochirotida on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
42 occurrences- Ordovician2%
- Devonian7%
- Carboniferous43%
- Permian5%
- Middle Triassic7%
- Late Triassic2%
- Late Jurassic10%
- Late Cretaceous5%
- Pleistocene19%
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
8 formations
- Wewoka Formation18
- White Chalk Formation1
- Florena Formation1
- Ojlemyr cherts Formation1
- Beattie Formation · Council Grove Group1
- Muschelkalk Formation1
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The named rock units Aspidochirotida has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 17 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Aspidochirotida and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Aspidochirotida and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
462 taxa- Echinoidea28 sites
- Crinoidea20 sites
- Holothuria19 sites
- Ammodiscus18 sites
- Euphemites carbonarius18 sites
- Pseudozygopleurids indet.18 sites
- Anthraconeilo taffiana17 sites
- Asteroidea17 sites
- Earlandinita17 sites
- Glabrocingulum grayvillense17 sites
- Ianthinopsis17 sites
- Meekospira peracuta17 sites
- Plagioglypta17 sites
- Pseudorthoceras17 sites
- Reophax17 sites
- Trepospira illinoisensis17 sites
- Ammobaculites16 sites
- Bathysiphon16 sites
- Crurithyris planoconvexa16 sites
- Nuculopsis wewokana16 sites
- Endothyranella15 sites
- Gastrioceras15 sites
- Lindostroemella cf. patula15 sites
- Bairdia14 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 39 sites for Aspidochirotida, 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
12 references- Marine Communities of a Portion of the Wewoka Formation (Pennsylvanian) in Hughes County, Oklahoma18
- Site U15178
- Contribution à la connaissance des sclérites d'holothurides fossiles4
- Isolated sclerites of Devonian non−pelmatozoan echinoderms3
- Holothurian sclerites from the Florena Shale (Permian) of Kansas2
- Diversity, palaeoecology and systematics of a marine fossil assemblage from the Late Triassic Cassian Formation at Settsass Scharte, N Italy1
- The oldest synallactid sea cucumber (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea: Aspidochirotida)1
- The echinoderms of the Rügen White Chalk (Maastrichtian, Germany)1
- Pravuscucumis deeckei paragen. et parasp. nov. (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) aus dem Turonium des Ostseegebietes1
- Middle Triassic holothurians from northern Spain1
- Middle Triassic juvenile terebratulids Angustothyris angustaeformis (Boeckh) from the Żebrak borehole, eastern Poland1
- Paleontologia y paleoecolgia de los yacimientos fosiliferos del Muschelkalk superior entre Alcover y Mont-Ral (Montañas de Prades, Provincia de Tarragona)1
Each of the 42 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 content1
Picture of Aspidochirotida
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- laszlo-photo
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Aspidochirotida was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itHolothuroidea through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brandt 1835