Bifungites

Bifungites is a dumbbell-shaped trace fossil predominately found in Paleozoic rocks from the Cambrian to the Mississippian, believed to be the burrows of extinct animals. A paper published in September 2024 reports the discovery of worms of genus Annulitubus in Bifungites in rocks from the Devonian Pimenteira Formation of Brazil, the first record of the creatures that created the burrows.

No picture of Bifungites was found. Wikipedia and Wikidata were searched and had none. iDigBio and GBIF were not searched: the Paleobiology Database does not place Bifungites firmly enough to tell it from something else bearing the same name, and a search on the name alone returns whichever of them was photographed. Smithsonian Open Access did not answer, so this is what the others held rather than everything there is.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
IchnofossilsPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 269 million years on record.

The record covers at least 516 Mya to 247 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 525.5 Mya to 241.464 Mya.

Cambrian — about 1 of 7 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 0 of 7 occurrencesSilurian — about 0 of 7 occurrencesDevonian — about 4 of 7 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 1 of 7 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 0 of 7 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 7 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 1 of 7 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 7 occurrences531–521 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences521–511 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences413–403 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences403–393 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences393–383 Mya — about 2 occurrences383–374 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences374–364 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences364–354 Mya — about 1 occurrence354–344 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences255–246 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences246–236 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences516 Mya247 Mya531 Mya236 Mya

7 occurrences of Bifungites on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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

7 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

5 formations

Ponta Grossa — 25.08°S, 50.15°WPonta Grossa — 24.50°S, 50.40°WThree Forks Shale — 45.35°N, 111.17°WTal — 30.45°N, 78.08°ESappington — 45.78°N, 111.81°WVossenveld — 51.97°N, 6.73°E

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The named rock units Bifungites has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Bifungites and its relatives

Devonian

Where Bifungites and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

108 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Bifungites, 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 7 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 content0

No picture of Bifungites was found. Wikipedia and Wikidata were searched and had none.

iDigBio and GBIF were not searched: the Paleobiology Database does not place Bifungites firmly enough to tell it from something else bearing the same name, and a search on the name alone returns whichever of them was photographed.

Smithsonian Open Access did not answer, so this is what the others held rather than everything there is.

No 3D scan of Bifungites 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 itIchnofossils through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Desio 1940