Astylospongia

Yale Peabody Museum · 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
- AstylospongiidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Lithistida
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Lithistida
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Lithistida
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Porifera
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Lithistida
Time the record covers
At least 70 million years on record.
The record covers at least 443.1 Mya to 372.15 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 445.2 Mya to 358.86 Mya.
14 occurrences of Astylospongia on record, most of them in the Silurian. 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
14 occurrences- Ordovician7%
- Silurian79%
- Devonian14%
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
10 formations
- Waldron Shale Formation3
- Garra Formation1
- Wabash Formation1
- Laurel Limestone Formation1
- Laurel Formation1
- Wayne Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Astylospongia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Astylospongia and its relatives
SilurianWhere Astylospongia and its relatives were recorded in the Silurian.
Found in the same rock
206 taxa- Bryozoa6 sites
- Eucalyptocrinites6 sites
- Lecanocrinus6 sites
- Anastrophia5 sites
- Atrypa reticularis5 sites
- Dictyonella reticulata5 sites
- Dimerocrinites5 sites
- Howellella (Howellella) crispa5 sites
- Lyriocrinus5 sites
- Macrostylocrinus5 sites
- Rhynchotreta americana5 sites
- Sievertsia5 sites
- Stegerhynchus5 sites
- Whitfieldella nitida5 sites
- Atrypina disparilis4 sites
- Brachiopoda4 sites
- Cornulites4 sites
- Decaschisma pulchellus4 sites
- Eohalysiocrinus4 sites
- Fardenia (Coolinia)4 sites
- Favosites4 sites
- Gastropoda4 sites
- Leptaena rhomboidalis4 sites
- Loxonema4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Astylospongia, 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
8 references- Caradocian-Gedinnian echinoderm associations of Central and Eastern North America6
- Catalogue of the fossil sponges in the Geological Department of the British Museum (Natural History)2
- Species-abundance models: an ecological approach to inferring paleoenvironment and resolving paleoecological change in the Waldron Shale (Silurian)1
- Silurian (Wenlock) demosponges from the Avalanche Lake area of the Mackenzie Mountains, southwestern District of Mackenzie, Northwest Territories, Canada1
- Eponges siliceuses du Dévonien supérieur de la Rade de Brest (France)[Siliceous sponges in the Upper Devonian of Rade de Brest (France)]1
- Middle Silurian Ludlovian and Wenlockian sponges from Baillie-Hamilton and Cornwallis Islands, Arctic Canada1
- Percé, Québec, Canada1
- Sponges from the Early Devonian Garra Formation, New South Wales1
Each of the 14 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 Astylospongia
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- Yale Peabody Museum
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Photogrammetry
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Astylospongia sp. · MST:PALEO:MST-SP-2615
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAstylospongiidae through timeFormations of the SilurianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Roemer 1860