Bicuspina
Searched as Bicuspina cf. cava. The Paleobiology Database treats Bicuspina as the accepted name.

via GBIF · CC BY-NC 4.0 · 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
- TriplesiidaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Brachiopoda
- Life habit
- low-level epifaunalPBDB, for Brachiopoda
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB, for Brachiopoda
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Strophomenata
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Lophophorata
Time the record covers
At most 14 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 463.3 Mya and 450.1 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Bicuspina on record, most of them in the Ordovician. 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
3 occurrences- Ordovician100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Bicuspina has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Bicuspina and its relatives
OrdovicianWhere Bicuspina and its relatives were recorded in the Ordovician.
Found in the same rock
555 taxa- Leptaena20 sites
- Dalmanella16 sites
- Reuschella horderleyensis16 sites
- Howellites15 sites
- Onniella14 sites
- Crinoidea13 sites
- Sowerbyella13 sites
- Tallinnella13 sites
- Dolerorthis12 sites
- Leptaena ventricosa12 sites
- Platystrophia12 sites
- Broeggerolithus11 sites
- Paracraniops11 sites
- Rostricellula11 sites
- Brongniartella10 sites
- Bryozoa10 sites
- Colaptomena expansa prolata10 sites
- Nicolella actoniae10 sites
- Skenidioides costatus10 sites
- Sowerbyella (Sowerbyella) sericea10 sites
- Broeggerolithus broeggeri9 sites
- Dinorthis berwynensis9 sites
- Kjaerina9 sites
- Nicolella9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 57 sites for Bicuspina, 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
2 references- The biostratigraphy of the Ordovician of Bohemia2
- Trilobiti drabovskych a letenskych vrstev ceskeho ordoviku1
Each of the 3 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 Bicuspina
- Source
- GBIF
- Credit
- via GBIF
- Licence
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow 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 itTriplesiidae through timeFormations of the OrdovicianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Havlicek 1950