Asteriidae
The Asteriidae are a diverse family of Asteroidea in the order Forcipulatida. It is one of three families in the order Forcipulatida.

Matt Knoth · 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
- ForcipulatidaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Forcipulatida
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunal, solitaryPBDB, for Forcipulatida
- Motility
- slow-movingPBDB, for Forcipulatida
- Vision
- limitedPBDB, for Asteroidea
- Environment
- marine,brackishPBDB, for Forcipulatida
Time the record covers
At least 199 million years on record.
The record covers at least 199.5 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 11.7 ka.
28 occurrences of Asteriidae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
28 occurrences- Early Jurassic11%
- Middle Jurassic11%
- Late Jurassic7%
- Late Cretaceous39%
- Eocene11%
- Miocene7%
- Pleistocene14%
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
12 formations
- La Meseta Formation3
- Craie d'Antifer Formation2
- Craie du Cap Fagnet Formation2
- Talbot Formation2
- Gulpen Formation1
- Marnes de Jamoigne Formation1
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The named rock units Asteriidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Asteriidae and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Asteriidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
445 taxa- Asterias3 sites
- Monoceratina3 sites
- Planularia3 sites
- Schuleridea3 sites
- Sclerasterias zinsmeisteri3 sites
- Sinosura wolburgi3 sites
- Spirillina3 sites
- Ammobaculites2 sites
- Amphiura plana2 sites
- Amphorometra conoidea2 sites
- Applinocrinus cretaceus2 sites
- Astacolus2 sites
- Bourgueticrinus2 sites
- Cardiaster granulosus2 sites
- Cardiotaxis2 sites
- Chomataster acules2 sites
- Cidaridae2 sites
- Coulonia2 sites
- Ctenophoraster downeyae2 sites
- Cyclaster2 sites
- Cytherella2 sites
- Dentalina2 sites
- Echinocorys2 sites
- Echinogalerus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 25 sites for Asteriidae, 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
16 references- Première observation d'éléments squelettiques d'Asteriidae (Asteroidea, Echinodermata) dans les craies du Cénomanien au Coniacien du Bassin de Paris (France)7
- Eocene stelleroids (Echinodermata) at Seymour Island, Antarctic Peninsula3
- The Mesozoic and Cenozoic Echinodermata of the United States3
- Hettangian Asteriidae (Asteroidea: Echinodermata) from southern Germany: taxonomy, phylogeny and life habits2
- The Pleistocene marine fauna of Wailes Bluff and Langley Bluff, Maryland2
- Mass mortality of an asteriid starfish (Forcipulatida, Asteroidea, Echinodermata) from the Late Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous) of Morocco1
- Asteroidea (Echinodermata) from the Oxfordian (Late Jurassic) of Savigna, Départment du Jura, France1
- The echinoderms of the Rügen White Chalk (Maastrichtian, Germany)1
- A new microvertebrate fauna from the Middle Hettangian (Early Jurassic) of Fontenoille (Province of Luxembourg, south Belgium)1
- Late Cretaceous-Early Paleocene echinoderms and the K/T boundary in the southeast Netherlands and the northeast Belgium. - part 5: Asteroids1
- An unusual new asteriid (Echinodermata: Asteroidea) from the Cretaceous of California1
- Eine Echinodermen-Fauna aus dem mittleren Dogger des Aargauer Juras1
Each of the 28 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. 4 further references are not listed. 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 Asteriidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Matt Knoth
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Asteriidae was found in Sketchfab.
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Asteriidae”
- 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 itForcipulatida through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1840