Charnia masoni

Smith609 at English Wikipedia · CC BY 2.5 · via Wikidata/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
- CharniaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB
- Environment
- outer shelf,marinePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 97 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 635 Mya and 538.8 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
31 occurrences of Charnia masoni on record. 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
31 occurrencesThese 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
13 formations
- Mistaken Point Formation · Conception Group9
- Bradgate Formation · Maplewell Series Group4
- Drook Formation · Conception Group3
- Fermeuse Formation · St John's Group3
- Trepassey Formation · St John's Group3
- Briscal Formation · Conception Group2
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The named rock units Charnia masoni has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
93 taxa- Charniodiscus11 sites
- Primocandelabrum11 sites
- Bradgatia linfordensis9 sites
- Aspidella8 sites
- Aspidella terranovica8 sites
- Thectardis avalonensis7 sites
- Beothukis mistakensis6 sites
- Fractofusus andersoni6 sites
- Hiemalora stellaris6 sites
- Primocandelabrum hiemaloranum6 sites
- Trepassia wardae6 sites
- Vinlandia antecedens6 sites
- Arborea spinosa5 sites
- Charniodiscus procerus5 sites
- Pectinifrons abyssalis5 sites
- Charnia gracilis4 sites
- Hadryniscala avalonica4 sites
- Ivesheadia lobata4 sites
- Arborea arborea3 sites
- Culmofrons plumosa3 sites
- Fractofusus misrai3 sites
- Hadrynichorde catalinensis3 sites
- Hapsidophyllas flexibilis3 sites
- Ivesheadiomorpha indet.3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 31 sites for Charnia masoni, 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- Ediacaran biota on Bonavista Peninsula, Newfoundland, Canada7
- Morphology and taphonomy of an Ediacaran frond: Charnia from the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland6
- The rangeomorph fossil Charnia from the Ediacaran Shibantan biota in the Yangtze Gorges area, South China2
- A Chronostratigraphic Framework for the Rise of the Ediacaran Macrobiota: New Constraints from Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, Newfoundland2
- Further Precambrian (Ediacaran) fossil discoveries in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire2
- Life after snowball: The oldest complex Ediacaran fossils2
- Ediacaran endlings from the Avalon Assemblage and the severity of the Kotlin Crisis: First documentation of the Inner Meadow Lagerstätte, Newfoundland, Canada1
- The Quanjishan Charnia assemblage from the northern Qaidam Basin, Tibetan Plateau, and implications for palaeoecology and taphonomy of Ediacaran fronds1
- A crown-group cnidarian from the Ediacaran of Charnwood Forest, UK1
- Deep-water Ediacaran fossils from northwestern Canada: Taphonomy, ecology, and evolution1
- A rich Ediacaran assemblage from eastern Avalonia: Evidence of early widespread diversity in the deep ocean1
- New proarticulata from the Vendian of the Arkhangel'sk region1
Each of the 31 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 content2

Picture of Charnia masoni
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Smith609 at English Wikipedia
- Licence
- CC BY 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCharnia through time
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ford 1958